Our nation's history of warfare has its roots in face-to-face combat—lining up squarely in front of the enemy and shooting. Over time, this paradigm evolved—short-range artillery, then longer range artillery, land and sea mines and torpedoes, and aircraft with bombs and machine guns. We first used unmanned aircraft in World War II. Today, ships launch expendable precision unmanned vehicles called cruise missiles; aircraft shoot air-to-air missiles that kill before the pilot can see the enemy airframe; and submarines launch torpedoes and missiles. We have come a long way, but we have tiptoed and suboptimized efforts in reuseable unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs).
There are four main hurdles to mainstreaming UAVs.
- There is no standard for acceptable losses of UAVs in training or wartime scenarios, and we have no statistically meaningful historical data to determine acceptable loss rates.
- The warrior unions do not want to relinquish missions. Some rotary-wing types, for example, do not want to change from the MH-53 to unmanned undersea or surface vehicle (UUV or USV) minesweepers because it would cost the help community aircraft, pilots, big decks, and money. With fewer helo pilots and dollars, the aviation community also fears it would lose leadership opportunities in the Navy. In addition, being replaced for some missions by unmanned platforms is a blow to the ego for some fleet operators.
- To personnel attracted to the adventure and challenge of military operations, unmanned vehicles do not appear very rewarding to command or operate. They also view command of a unmanned vehicle unit as less career enhancing than command of manned units.
- Agreements with the Soviets that kept our laboratories from fully exploring the possible uses of unmanned vehicles still haunt us (e.g., armed UAVs).
With UAVs, Congress sees the possibility of winning wars with less loss of life, and it is encouraging the military to use unmanned platforms. Unfortunately, our war fighters have not:
- Scrutinized mission-essential task lists for dirty, dull, and dangerous missions that could be transferred to unmanned vehicles
- Adequately worked with the laboratories to eliminate redundant efforts and link all efforts to a warfighting requirement
- Stated requirements for large numbers of unmanned vehicles, which could drive down per unit costs
The result has been hundreds of millions of tax dollars spent pursuing stovepiped solutions to tasks, using flawed assumptions that ultimately caused efforts to be canceled,
The Way Ahead
Leaders of the armed services together must:
- Establish what tasks can and should be completed by unmanned vehicles
- Develop processes to work with military laboratories to direct and apply their discoveries to such tasks
- Validate acceptable loss limits for unmanned vehicles, in peace and in war
- Determine the degree to which a commanding officer will be penalized (if at all) for exceeding acceptable losses
- Make command of an unmanned unit a "must punch" ticket on a career track equivalent to command of a high-profile manned unit
- Articulate requirements in the acquisition process, with sufficient numbers to bring down per-unit costs
Unmanned vehicles are incredible, relatively low-cost force multipliers, but their development and employment by the U.S. armed forces will continue to languish until the military leadership acts. Unless some flag officer puts this on his "to do" list today, tomorrow's soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines will lack an important—potentially lifesaving—tool. There is an opportunity for someone to lead, guide, and shape this area into a real success, like the ushering in of nuclear power and computers into the Navy. Who will seize it?
Captain Kynett, a Citadel graduate, has flown the Navy’s T-28, TH-57, UH-1, CH-46, C-12, H-53 for minesweeping, and the Soviet Mi-8. He currently is he undersea warfare training officer for Commander, Fleet Forces Command, focusing on mainstreaming mine warfare and organic mine warfare issues.