The Navy has led the use of unmanned aircraft—drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—among the U.S. military services. In the World War I era, the service experimented with radio-controlled aircraft and had a major drone program during World War II.1 Both the Army Air Forces and Navy used explosive-laden, war-weary aircraft as radio-controlled attackers at the end of World War II, with the Navy continuing their use (from carriers) during the Korean War. But all of these were “one-way” attack aircraft.
Aircraft-launched drones—intended to “come back”—were flown on reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. In the same period, the Navy developed and procured 732 drone antisubmarine helicopters (DASHs) that were deployed from cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and escort ships.2
A decade later the Navy again initiated a relatively large-scale UAV program—the Pioneer. Flown in combat by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, the aircraft was highly successful.
The Pioneer’s development was somewhat convoluted. Its origins were in the competitive Israeli Mastiff and Scout UAV programs, initiated respectively by Tadiran, an Israeli firm specializing in electronics and communications, and Israel Aircraft Industries. Both UAVs were employed with great success in the June 1982 Arab-Israeli conflict to detect Soviet-provided surface-to-air (SAM) missiles in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.3
The Israelis destroyed 86 SAM sites, reportedly with no aircraft losses. Impressed with the Mastiff’s and Scout’s success, then-Secretary of the Navy John Lehman initiated an effort to develop a UAV for the U.S. sea services to perform gunfire spotting for battleships and reconnaissance.
Lehman dispatched Captain Al Wise, a naval aviator, to Israel to look into two of the country’s UAV programs—Mastiff controlled by military intelligence (Aman) and Scout under the Israel Air Force (IAF)—and make a selection for evaluation and possible procurement. Wise chose the Mastiff, in part because the IAF was not prepared to give up Scouts for U.S. evaluation.4 Frustrated with the long-delayed and failing Lockheed Aquila joint-UAV program, Lehman made a personal deal with Israeli Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin to acquire Mastiffs. Lehman cleared the arrangement personally with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, without reference to the Department of Defense acquisition organizations and procedures.5
Using “black” funds, Captain Wise pushed the effort through the Navy headquarters and briefed four congressional committees. The operating Navy said that the schedule put forward by Secretary Lehman for getting a UAV in the Fleet could not be achieved. The Marine Corps, according to Wise, said “why not,” and immediately 36 Marines were dispatched to Israel “with no passports and not a clue about what lay ahead for them.”6 Those Marines became the 1st Remotely Piloted Vehicle Platoon (RPV). Their evaluation of the Mastiff included operating from the helicopter carrier Guam (LPH-9) off the coast of Israel in 1984.
In January 1986, the Navy awarded contracts to AAI Corporation of Cockeysville, Maryland, and Mazlat Ltd., the latter a joint venture of Israel Aircraft Industries and Tadiran, to produce a UAV for the Navy and Marine Corps—the Pioneer. This was a new design based on the Scout. With some components manufactured in Israel, the AAI-Mazlat team produced 72 Pioneers—40 for the Navy, 24 for the Marine Corps, and 8 for the Army—at a cost of $87.7 million. The first was delivered in May 1986.
The Pioneer carried sensors, had its piston engine in the fuselage, and was fitted with twin tail booms. Fabricated of metal and fiberglass, it presented a small radar cross-section, was transported disassembled, and could be quickly put together with minimum tools. The UAV, which had a fixed tricycle landing gear, could take off normally from a runway, from a special catapult, or with rocket booster; the take-off run was just under 500 feet. It could be recovered by landing on a runway, being flown into a net, or using a tailhook.
The Pioneer could carry a sensor payload of 66 pounds with up to 53 pounds of fuel for a 7½-hour mission. Trading fuel for payload, up to 75 pounds of sensors could be carried for shorter missions. The first shipboard trials of the Pioneer were conducted in December 1986 on board the battleship Iowa (BB-61) in the Chesapeake Bay. During subsequent proof-of-concept tests in the Caribbean in January–February 1987, the Iowa’s 16-inch guns fired on targets detected by Pioneers. (In that exercise four of the five embarked Pioneers were lost.) The Marine Corps evaluated the UAV in 1987, including operations from an LHA-type amphibious ship.
During the Gulf War (1991), the UAVs were flown from two battleships, the Missouri (BB-63) and Wisconsin (BB-64), operated by Navy Composite Squadron (VC) 6, and ashore by Army and Marine units—the 1st, 2d, and 3d Marine RPV Companies. The aircraft were fitted with a daylight television camera or a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor. The control/data link was a C-band system, highly resistant to jamming, with a range of 100 nautical miles.
During the Operation Desert Storm period (16 January–27 February 1991), 40 Pioneers flew for a total of 1,641 hours, with at least one airborne at all times during the conflict. The drones were employed to adjust naval gunfire and for battle-damage assessment, reconnaissance, and force coordination. With respect to naval gunfire spotting, the Department of Defense report on the Gulf War noted: “Using a UAV in this manner increased the battleship’s flexibility to provide NGFS [naval gunfire support] because it allowed each battleship to receive real-time target acquisition and BDA [bomb-damage assessment] without relying on external spotting and intelligence assets.”7
On 27 February 1991, 40 Iraqi soldiers on Faylaka Island surrendered to a Pioneer launched from the battleship Wisconsin. Previous Pioneer overflights had led to precisely targeted air attacks on their patrol boats and island trenches, causing the Iraqis to believe that detection by the drone would result in similar attacks. It was history’s first known surrender of troops to an unmanned vehicle.
The final DOD report on the war stated: “The Navy Pioneer UAV system’s availability exceeded expectations. Established sortie rates indicated a deployed unit could sustain 60 flight hours per month.”8 Pioneers also were used during U.S.-allied military operations in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq.
In 1992 the Navy flew Pioneers from the helicopter carrier New Orleans (LPH-11). While all previous shipboard recoveries had been into a net, drones landing on the LPH snagged one of two arresting wires on the flight deck. This predated the recent, highly publicized X-47B unmanned combat air system carrier demonstration (UCAS-D) drone operations from aircraft carriers by two decades.
The surviving U.S. Pioneers were designated RQ-2 in January 1997 when the UAV community received designations—R for reconnaissance and Q for unmanned aircraft. The Pioneer was retired from U.S. military service in 2007, with VC-6 being the last operator of the drone.9 Its decade of service marked a major step in the development and operation of unmanned aerial vehicles in the U.S. armed forces.
1. See RADM Delmar S. Fahrney, USN (Ret.), “The Birth of Guided Missiles,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (December 1980), 54–60.
2. One additional DASH was procured for the U.S. Army. See N. Polmar, “The Unmanned Helicopter,” Naval History (December 1999), 10–11.
3. Philip J. Millis, “RPVs over the Bekaa Valley,” Army (June 1983), 50.
4. CAPT Al Wise, USN (Ret.), e-mail to N. Polmar, 30 June 2013.
5. John F. Lehman Jr., e-mail to N. Polmar, 27 June 2013.
6. Wise email.
7. Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, vol. I (Washington, DC: April 1992), 292.
8. Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, Final Report to Congress, (Washington, DC: April 1992), 808.
9. The Mastiff and Scout UAVs remained in Israeli service into the early 1990s.