Recent discussions concerning the relevance of the supercarrier in the face of emerging long-range anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems have focused on the absence of a deep-strike, persistent combat presence within the carrier air wing. By choosing to rely on traditional manned platforms such as the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and the forthcoming F-35C Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, and by relegating the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program to a refueling role (first renamed the Carrier-Based Aerial Refueling System, or CBARS; now termed the MQ-25A Stingray), the Navy has affirmed its preference for traditional manned assets within the carrier air wing, at least for the immediate future. As the life cycle of the Super Hornet is extended to meet operational demands, realistically, by 2030, the F-35 will be the sole stealth platform in the air wing. The ensuing combat range limitation of this future air wing faced with such threats calls into question the very relevance of the carrier itself.
This is a decision with widespread implications not only for the air wing, but also for the crew and the mission of the carrier. Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) such as the Stingray have the immense potential to be much more than just a “flying truck” tasked with extending the service life of the Super Hornet and acting as an airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platform.1 For the carrier fleet, embracing the Stingray’s originally intended role as a deep-strike asset, while actively striving for greater UAS integration will provide sustained relevance, a way forward, and the adaptable means to ensure the continuation of forward U.S. naval presence that the carrier and its embarked air wing have provided our nation for the past 70 years.
Defining the Threat
During his 2015 confirmation hearing, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John M. Richardson mentioned that some of his greatest concerns are the A2/AD capabilities currently being developed by the Chinese military as a means to counter U.S. naval presence in the Pacific region.2 Coupled with the current employment of antiship cruise missiles in the eastern Mediterranean by Russia as part of its intervention in support of the Syrian government, A2/AD threats continue to expand at a rate that challenges the Navy’s strategic reach around the world.3 Antiship ballistic missiles that can range in excess of 900 miles pose the most significant threat to the carrier, while the effective combat radius of the carrier’s manned aircraft is less than one-third of that distance.4 With the Department of Defense’s rebalance to Asia, the importance of employing autonomous systems in innovative operational and organizational constructs is a necessity for ensuring freedom of access for U.S. forces in a widespread, contested A2/AD environment.5
In the South China Sea in particular, China is perceived as employing a “creeping assertion of control” that “involves civilian rather than naval vessels” coupled with land reclamation and its subsequent militarization. In response, a greater amount of consistent, reliable ISR data is seen as an essential means to send a message to China that “we know what you are doing, your actions have consequences, and we have the capacity and the will and we are here.”6 While current manned and unmanned platforms in the Navy’s inventory are capable of providing reliable and consistent ISR data, in the event of regional escalation, however, the current effective “combat reach” of the carrier air wing in the face of expansive A2/AD threats is greatly hindered by the limited range and overall composition of its manned aviation assets. The capability of the air wing to provide a deep-strike capability—previously provided by the A-3 Skywarrior, A-6 Intruder, and even the F-14 Tomcat—has been arguably absent since the 1990s.7 Pushing an ISR role for the Stingray (while current naval assets are more than capable of accomplishing that mission) and delegating the platform to a refueling role for shorter-range manned assets negates the revolutionary potential of the technology. In so doing, the Navy risks a greater reliance on more capable, longer-range, stealthy, land-based Air Force assets such as the B-21 by failing to leverage UASs as a relatively cheaper, safer, and more expedited means of returning the deep-strike mission set to the carrier air wing.
The Unmanned Opportunity
Because of their proven long loiter times, advanced intelligence-gathering suites, and ability to stage off naval vessels present in the region, naval UASs are currently and uniquely capable of ensuring the U.S. military’s freedom of navigation to conduct operations, while also promoting other maritime nations’ compliance with the international law of the sea.8 From a strike perspective, UASs also promise greater lethality at a greater distance, with less risk to personnel.
Concurrent with technological advancement, future naval operations have been predicted to trend toward greater use of unmanned and autonomous aerial vehicles, and the inclusion of both manned and unmanned systems in the same decision loop.9 This shift is evidenced by the Navy’s current development of concepts of operation with manned and unmanned aerial assets. The pairing of manned aircraft with land-based maritime patrol UASs (the P-8 Poseidon and MQ-4C Triton) and ship-based tactical UASs (the MH-60R Seahawk and MQ-8B/C Fire Scout) are examples of the Navy’s approach to integrating manned and unmanned aerial systems as a stepping stone toward full autonomy, with due consideration given to the challenges this technology already has brought to traditional naval tactics, techniques, and procedures.10
These integration efforts must continue as rapidly as possible while also expanding more fully to the operations of carrier air wings. As new technology historically has been introduced into the fleet, its subsequent application has only been as good as the level of understanding, integration, and proficiency achieved prior to its actual tactical employment.11 The Stingray in particular has the potential to fill a unique role within the carrier air wing construct, but only if it is leveraged to the degree for which it was originally intended—as “an unmanned longer-range carrier-based aircraft capable of being air-refueled to provide greater standoff capability, to expand payload and launch options, and to increase naval reach and persistence,” as set forth in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).12 While this question of mission may seem to be a question of Navy desires versus congressional mandate, the Navy’s inability to operationally field such a platform within a decade of the 2006 QDR hints at an underlying reluctance to fully embrace UAS technology.
‘Ultimate Advantage’
Jack Welch, the former chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric, stated that “an organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”13 When tested against this rubric, the Navy’s organizational approach to its deep-strike capability is severely lacking—risking the national asset of the carrier fleet in particular as well as the fleet’s ability to freely maneuver across the vast majority of the global maritime environment in general. Ever-increasing A2/AD threats are rapidly undermining the technological and qualitative advantages and power-projection capabilities the naval service has enjoyed for generations. The Stingray’s tanking and ISR missions as currently described fail to meet the congressionally mandated direction for a low-observable, deep-strike UAS, a mission reiterated by the House Armed Services Committee in its version of the Fiscal Year 2017 defense bill.14 Granted, introducing such a revolutionary platform into the carrier air wing will pose immense difficulties, but unlike the unmanned antecedents DASH and Pioneer (see sidebar), current demonstrated technology and field testing on board the USS George H. W. Bush (CVN-77) and Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) from 2013 to 2014 supports full-fledged UAS integration into the delicately choreographed carrier launch-and-recovery process.15
The decision to modify the Stingray’s requirements repeatedly based on fiscal realities is reminiscent of the ill-fated DASH program, where the surface community struggled without properly trained operators to use a poorly integrated asset that was foreign to their operating environment. In light of such issues, a manned aircraft—the SH-60B—was ultimately chosen to assume DASH’s mission. Worse, terming the Stingray’s proposed ISR and refueling missions as a “legitimate” primary use of the platform so as to “liberate” manned strike fighter aircraft from the airborne tanking mission echoes the historical view of those admirals who perceived fledgling naval aviation assets as useful only as spotters and air defense in support of a battleship-centric fleet.16 As history has suggested, fielding an unmanned platform without setting the initial conditions to accomplish the original mission, failing to sustain the effort through to completion, and falling short of acceptance and integration across the entire service greatly increase the program’s likelihood for failure. The Navy has a tradition of UAS innovation, albeit an episodic one. From a historical standpoint, the Navy’s adoption of unmanned aerial technology in innovative, paradigm-challenging ways has shown the capacity to revolutionize naval operations. This innovation, however, is only widely effective to the degree it is adopted, integrated, and employed across the fleet from the top down and the bottom up. Integration and pursuit of the unmanned strike mission will not happen without strong, focused leadership from the highest levels, coupled with dedicated follow-through at the lowest levels. Should the Navy continue to pursue an approach favoring periodic and sporadic innovation rather than widespread integration, history offers the lesson that very little will change.
1. Sam LaGrone, “Navy Pushing New Name for Unmanned Aerial Tanker: RAQ-25 Stingray,” USNI News, 27 February 2016, http://news.usni.org/2016/02/27/navy-pushing-new-name-for-unmanned-aerial-tanker-raq-25-stingray.
2. U.S. Congressional Transcripts, “Senate Armed Services Committee Holds Hearing on Nomination of Adm. John Richardson to be Chief of Naval Operations,” 114th Cong., 1st sess., 30 July 2015, 23.
3. Jonathan Altman, “Russian A2/AD in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Growing Risk,” Naval War College Review, vol. 69, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 72–75.
4. Ben Ho Wan Beng, “Opinion: It’s Time to Rethink U.S. Carrier CONOPS,” USNI News, 24 May 2016, http://news.usni.org/2016/05/24/carrier_conops.
5. The Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy: Achieving U.S. National Security Objectives in a Changing Environment (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, August 2015), 22.
6. Ronald O’Rourke, Maritime Territorial and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) Disputes Involving China: Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, August 2015), 33.
7. Henry J. Hendrix, Retreat from Range: The Rise and Fall of Carrier Aviation (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2015), 51–52.
8. O’Rourke, Maritime, 49.
9. Megan Eckstein, “Manazir: Networked Systems are the Future of 5th Generation Warfare, Training,” USNI News, 18 May 2016, https://news.usni.org/2016/05/18/manazir-networked-systems-are-future-of-5th-generation-warfare-training.
10. Department of the Navy, How We Fight: Handbook for the Naval Warfighter (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, April 2015), 160.
11. Thomas Foster, Matthew Schnappauf, James Cordonier, and Daniel Murphy, “Air Wing Fallon: An Evolutionary Experience,” Naval Helicopter Association Rotor Review, vol. 128 (Spring 2015), 77–81.
12. Office of the Secretary of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, February 2006), 46.
13. Robert L. Slater, Jack Welch and the GE Way: Management Insights and Leadership Secrets of the Legendary CEO (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999), 35.
14. Sam LaGrone, “Navy Wants to Shed RAQ Designation from Stingray Carrier UAV,” USNI News, 11 March 2016, http://news.usni.org/2016/03/10/navy-wants-to-shed-raq-prefix-from-stingray-carrier-uav.
15. Megan Eckstein, “Navy Plans MQ-XX Stingray with Only ISR, Tanking Capability; Marines Testing MQ-8C Fire Scout On Amphibs,” USNI News, 20 April 2016, http://news.usni.org/2016/04/20/navy-plans-mq-xx-stingray-with-only-isr-tanking-capability-marines-testing-mq-8c-fire-scout-on-amphibs.
16. Sam LaGrone, “Navy Pushing New Name for Unmanned Aerial Tanker: RAQ-25 Stingray,” USNI News, 27 February 2016, http://news.usni.org/2016/02/27/navy-pushing-new-name-for-unmanned-aerial-tanker-raq-25-stingray.
DASH and Pioneer: The Past Is Prologue
The purpose of using UASs as strike assets has its roots in naval history. After financing the bulk of the first unmanned aircraft to achieve autonomous flight within a decade of the first manned aerial flight, the Navy in 1917 granted the first military contract for an unmanned flight system—Elmer Sperry’s “aerial torpedo.” The Navy conducted the first U.S. combat mission employing weapons on board an unmanned aircraft (the TDR-1) against the Japanese on Balalae Island in the Solomons during World War II.1 In the 1960s, the Navy developed and operationally fielded the first weapons-delivery UAS—the revolutionary Drone antisubmarine helicopter (DASH), the premier antisubmarine-warfare (ASW) platform of its time.2 Even the longest-serving Navy UAS, the ISR-centric RQ-2 Pioneer, first fielded by the Navy in 1985, was leveraged as an asset for battle-damage assessment for manned strike aviation assets and naval gunfire support. Unfortunately, in each of these instances, the lack of sustained top-down leadership promoting the specific system, budgetary drawdowns, and interservice skepticism, apathy, and outright resistance left each of these programs as footnotes to history. This left a culture predisposed toward a “man in the loop,” embodied by the testimony of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air, Vice Admiral Paul H. Ramsey, who in June 1966 before the Senate Armed Services Committee stated that the Navy should defer to manned aviation assets because “in robots, you can’t build judgment.”3
Incorporation of UAS at the operational level has been achieved by the Navy only twice in its history, in the fielding of DASH and the Pioneer. These two successes were in large part the result of centralized, top-down approach provided by senior Navy uniformed and civilian leaders at the time. In the case of DASH in the 1960s, Admiral Arleigh A. Burke used personal influence, his role as the de facto head of the Navy’s surface community, and his long tenure as Chief of Naval Operations to incorporate DASH as part of the Naval Ship Systems Command (now NAVSEA) destroyer rehabilitation plan, termed the Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization program. Following his departure, with a preponderance of criticism from within the Navy, the Secretary of Defense defunded the program in the 1967 budget. By 1971, DASH program resources had been directed to the Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System manned helicopter program, and Navy leadership curtailed all subsequent UAS development.4
Similarly, in the 1980s, Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman, Jr., imposed central authority and forced the Pioneer UAS on the Navy and Marine Corps. Following his departure, attempts to terminate Pioneer were made, as had occurred with DASH. Although the platform proved its worth in combat during the Persian Gulf War it, too, fell out of use. In both instances, centralized control and the direct leadership of two strong personalities drove these two operational UAS into service.5
As a result, the Navy has had to “relearn” how to employ UAS as the technology was eliminated from, and then gradually reintroduced back into, the fleet over generations. In light of the wider historical use of UAS from smaller surface combatants, it seems ironic that the naval aviation community, which had the skill set most capable of integrating UAS technology, repeatedly chose instead to reject it. This dynamic left the surface warfare community, the one most unfamiliar with aviation, to attempt to overcome the obstacles of employing UAS at sea. Such an exclusionary mind-set, first manifest following the establishment of the hard-won, combat-proven synchronized process of the manned aviation carrier launch-and-recovery process, persists to the present day. The devolution of the mission of the UCLASS/CBARS/Stingray program to its current state embodies this mind-set and threatens to minimize the revolutionary impact an unmanned, nonpermissive deep-strike asset brings to the carrier. With the pending incorporation of the Stingray into carrier flight operations, the Navy needs a similar advocate to continually shepherd the program from conception, refinement, and beyond so that the fleet may leverage the asset fully and reap its benefits.
1. Laurence R. Newcome, Unmanned Aviation: A Brief History of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2004), 16. John D. Blom, Unmanned Aerial Systems: A Historical Perspective (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, September 2010), 47.
2. Thomas P. Ehrhard, “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the United States Armed Services: A Comparative Study of Weapon System Innovation” (PhD dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 2000), 304.
3. Ibid., 322.
4. Ibid., 360–61, 368.
5. Ibid., 401.