In the Fiscal Year 2001 Defense Authorization Bill Congress sent a significant challenge to the services: "It shall be a goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that (1) by 2010, one-third of the aircraft in the operational deep strike force aircraft fleet are unmanned; and (2) by 2015, one-third of the operational ground combat vehicles are unmanned" (H.R. 4025, sec. 220). A Senate amendment also contains a provision that would establish an initiative to promote the use of unmanned combat systems and technologies for the same goals. The bill "support[s] the need to strengthen ... efforts to exploit the significant potential of unmanned combat aircraft and ground vehicles to effectively accomplish many critical combat missions while avoiding risk to aircraft and ground vehicle crews."
There is an unacknowledged strategic conflict behind the congressional initiative. The Department of Defense clearly is taking a different path to put bombs on target with minimal risk to aircrews. We are on the road to autonomous, semiautonomous, and guided weapons launched by tactical platforms from ranges that minimize human exposure to lethal threats. In the case of the Navy, we continue to build our forces to launch the Tomahawk cruise missile, the stand-off land attack missile, the joint stand-off weapon, and other similar weapons from various platforms.
The Navy is fully capable of minimizing exposure to our personnel today, if one considers current stand-off weapons to be unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs). But Congress describes UCAVs not just as unmanned combat aircraft or advanced vehicles, but as combat vehicles with "unmanned advanced capabilities." They must be systems that can be deployed, retasked, recovered, and redeployed. The recover and redeploy characteristics do not describe stand-off weapons, although these weapons do provide relative safety for launching personnel.
The UCAV concept focuses on shortrange precision weapons delivered from unmanned, recoverable platforms. Some of the technologies involved overlap with stand-off weapons. But the real problem is that the UCAV concept is a parallel strategy that also costs big bucks. None of the services has the funds to buy, in anything close to a cost-effective manner, platforms and weapons for the stand-off approach now. How will we fund a parallel strategy in a no-/limited-growth fiscal environment-and maintain present readiness? This idea will siphon off already limited research and procurement money; the Navy should stay away from this unless new money comes from the taxpayers.
Considering that our combat losses in aircraft and personnel are incredibly low and continue to decrease, from a basic business perspective the UCAV concept is rather tenuous. What makes us think a UCAV will have a higher success rate than a manned aircraft with stand-off weapons? Most of our problems are targeting related; a UCAV force will do nothing to address those issues, and may exacerbate them. Moving war fighters farther from the battlespace will make targeting more difficult and mistakes more problematic.
Many believe the time for UCAV forces is here. Perhaps a limited role in ten years is reasonable. A ground UCAV might be the most critical requirement because of the proximity to the threat of an inhabited tactical vehicle. But the need for unmanned air vehicles is not so pressing, and Congress did not push this concept onto or below the water. Developing UCAV aircraft operating off of fixed airfields for strike warfare is a significant challenge, and may be a mission the Air Force wants to accept. Attempting to do the most demanding of the strike warfare tasks-suppression of enemy air defenses-with the first UCAV is politically appealing but fraught with technical risks. And doing that mission with a recoverable, redeployable system from a mobile floating airfield is wildly optimistic.
Navy leaders must consider whether there is a practical advantage to carrierbased UCAVs over stand-off weapons from aircraft. Unless there is convincing data to demonstrate this advantage, the Navy leadership should be highly skeptical. In the context of overstretched budgets, charging into the panacea of UCAVs risks collapsing already fiscally tenuous programs for existing platforms.
Congress appears to be enamored with the low-cost promise of UCAVs. Scientists are enthusiastic about tackling the technical challenges. Perhaps if we were in a war, taking such an approach would be warranted. The risk to our personnel already has been greatly reduced; combat losses now are tertiary to terrorist attacks and training mishaps. Naval aviation would be better served if we explained to Congress the success we have had in reducing combat losses with manned platforms while increasing our lethality against the enemy. Let's fund proven existing programs and our readiness accounts first.