This is the Capstone Essay Contest winner in the Aviation Category
Technological advancements in many different fields have given rise to the growing if somewhat fantasized concern, fed by movies such as Terminator and Stealth, that machines will replace humans in the near future. But it is not an entirely fictitious issue, and for some bright-eyed U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen, an illogical fear exists that naval aviation will become completely autonomous almost overnight. Though most of the technical information on the Navy’s unmanned programs remains classified, the concepts behind the employment of unmanned systems are not. Unmanned systems have begun to benefit both the Navy’s overall effectiveness and the naval aviator at the cockpit controls. The future of naval aviation will feature a combined team of manned and unmanned platforms.
Although rapid technological advancements in unmanned systems are occurring, their integration into the fleet will take time. When Lockheed Martin’s F-35 won the joint strike fighter competition in 2001, it was believed the fighter might start replacing F/A-18s as early as 2004. F-35s are only now entering service and no longer are expected to replace the F/A-18 entirely; instead, they will replace legacy Hornets. The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet aircraft will remain in service well into the 2040s.1 It is clear that unmanned platforms will not replace naval aviators any faster.
The most plausible outlook for the next several decades is a combination of manned and unmanned platforms. This manned-unmanned teaming already is being tested in a variety of roles. Joint Publication 3-60 outlines use of unmanned platforms for the finding, fixing, and tracking stages of the joint targeting cycle. Use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in these early stages of the cycle optimizes the naval aviator’s role by allowing greater focus on the end stages of engaging targets and making final assessments, supplementing the naval aviator’s well-established role with advanced tools.
The MQ-4C Triton fulfills this need for the maritime patrol community by expanding a P-8 Poseidon’s situational awareness and combat radius, with improved target-detection range and a more complete operational picture. When the first MQ-4C squadron was stood up in 2016, the Navy noted that the UAV would contribute substantially to the observe, orient, decide, and act (OODA) loop by “cover[ing] much of the first two [elements] and . . . allowing the P-8 crews to focus on the latter two.”2 The concept extends the mission platform’s situational awareness in the battlespace and aids in simple tasks so that the aircrew’s attention is employed on the most important tasks.
The Navy’s helicopter community also has shown that a manned-unmanned team is an effective method for accomplishing missions. The MQ-8B Fire Scout, an unmanned, remotely piloted helicopter, can perform tasks such as spotting targets for manned systems and helping guide weapons from launch to impact on target. In test operations on board the USS Freedom (LCS-1), the Fire Scout was tasked with finding, fixing, and tracking potential targets, while the human at the controls of the MH-60S Seahawk was concerned with making a positive identification of the target, engaging the target, and conducting a final post-battle assessment.
The newer MQ-8C proved its worth in April 2017, providing targeting information to manned systems at ranges of up to 300 miles.3 Despite all of the system’s groundbreaking advancements, the Fire Scout is not a fully autonomous system and cannot function without a human operator. Without the naval aviator, mission success is not possible, and the naval aviator’s role is optimized, not replaced by, advances in unmanned systems.
A manned-unmanned team is useful not only for targeting and OODA loops but also to alleviate the physical stresses current manned platforms endure fulfilling secondary roles. When the S-3A Viking was retired in 2009, the F/A-18F Super Hornet took over aerial refueling as a collateral mission. At present, Super Hornets sortie as tankers 25 to 30 percent of the time. Each F/A-18 has an operational life of 6,000 flight hours—meaning1,500 to 1,800 flight hours per airframe devoted to refueling instead of conducting its primary function as a multirole fighter attack aircraft. With a unit cost of $57 million per Super Hornet, the Navy can ill afford to waste finite flight hours on a collateral duty.
Some have suggested bringing the S-3A Vikings out of mothballs as a dedicated tanker platform.4 In the February Proceedings, Lieutenant Commander Colin Bernard argued that bringing back the Viking would be more advantageous than waiting for the MQ-25 Stingray to become operational because it could be procured faster than the Stingray. At the same time, the author acknowledged that “reintegrating the Viking would require the Navy to restart the training pipelines, re-create the maintenance supply chain, and develop a personnel career plan.” There is currently a massive backup in the tailhook training pipeline, and the Navy is struggling to send enough naval aviators out into its current tactical squadrons. Establishing another pipeline (one dependent on training in the troubled T-45) only would further impede carrier air wing operational capabilities and staffing.
The proposed MQ-25 Stingray can create an effective manned-unmanned team in the tactical air community.5 The Northrop Grumman X-47B, a demonstration combat UAV, proved in 2013 that autonomous carrier landings are possible.6 The U.S. Air Force’s experience in employing UAVs shows the immense cost savings per flight hour compared to manned aircraft.7 Thus, it would appear that the employment of the Stingray would not create nearly as many problems as bringing back the Viking would. The Stingray also could fulfill multiple operational roles (as the Viking once did). The Stingray can serve not only as a tanker but also, with appropriate sensors, as part of the joint targeting cycle. Unlike a recalled S-3A, the Stingray could expand the combat radius of the manned strike platform from 450 miles to more than 700 miles and perform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance tasks for the mission.8
Future plans for the carrier air wings call for just this sort of pairing of unmanned platforms with manned ones. In an October 2015 Center for New American Security report, retired Navy Captain Jerry Hendrix argued that the carrier air wing’s reach has been reduced drastically over the years, to the point of compromising the security of the carrier.9 Hendrix offers several proposals to improve this, the most extreme of which optimizes the wing by replacing the F-35C with a combination of unmanned attack aircraft and unmanned aerial refueling/reconnaissance aircraft while keeping manned platforms, such as the F/A-18, at the forefront of the mission. In all three of his proposed solutions, each unmanned platform would aid the manned strike fighter and the carrier air wing by expanding the range, operational time on station, and situational awareness of the pilot in command.
In the September 2016 Proceedings, Lieutenant Commander Daniel Marzluff wrote, “By choosing to rely on traditional manned platforms . . . and by relegating the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program to a refueling role
. . . the Navy has affirmed its preference for traditional manned assets within the carrier air wing.” While unmanned platforms are being developed and integrated into plans for the future, manned platforms still will be at the forefront and remain at the core of the mission.
The potential complications of making the future of naval aviation strictly unmanned are substantial and far reaching. While technology eventually could arrive at the point where a fully autonomous aircraft was possible, the Navy would have to meet the challenge of trusting a combat aircraft that did not have a human behind the controls, that adhered to the rules of engagement, and that could distinguish friend from foe when making the decision to launch a weapon at a target.
At best, the ethical implications and potential consequences of creating and employing a fully autonomous aircraft in the capacity of a strike fighter are extensive and precarious. At worst, the possibility of an enemy disrupting or taking control of an unmanned system poses too many hazards to make an entire air wing unmanned; the Navy’s core capabilities as well as the safety of the carrier would be compromised.
Despite rapid technological advancements, naval aviators in the manned platforms the Navy currently employs will remain central to the accomplishment of the mission for the foreseeable future. In 2015, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus declared that “the F-35 almost certainly will be the last manned strike fighter aircraft the . . . Navy will ever buy or fly.”10 Yet three years after this bold claim, the Navy already was creating plans for a sixth-generation manned fighter.11 For the midshipmen of the U.S. Naval Academy and other aspiring naval aviators, the future of naval aviation will not be a fleet of fully autonomous drones. What lies ahead instead is widespread employment of the currently developing dynamic of the manned-unmanned team. The next few decades will deliver some of the most advanced tools for mission success ever created—but naval aviators will still be in the cockpit at the controls.
1. “US Navy Awards F/A-18 fleet Upgrade Contract to Boeing,” Naval Technology, 6 March 2018.
2. Megan Eckstein, “Navy’s First Operational MQ-4C Triton Squadron Stands Up This Week,” USNI News, 25 October 2016.
3. Sam LaGrone, “Northrop Grumman Pitching MQ-8C Fire Scout to Extend Lethal Range of Littoral Combat Ship,” USNI News, 18 April 2017.
4. Ben Ho Wan Beng, “U.S. Navy: Time to Bring Back the S-3 Viking?” The Diplomat, 9 November 2015.
5. Sam LaGrone, “MQ-25 Stingray Unmanned Aerial Tanker Could Almost Double Strike Range of U.S. Carrier Air Wing,” USNI News, 1 September 2017.
6. Sam LaGrone, “New Age in Carrier Aviation Takes Off With X-47B Landing,” USNI News, 10 July 2013.
7. Mark Thompson, “Costly Flight Hours,” Time, 2 April 2013.
8. Sam LaGrone, “Navy Releases Final MQ-25 Stingray RFP; General Atomics Bid Revealed,” USNI News, 10 October 2017.
9. Dr. Jerry Hendrix, “Retreat from Range: The Rise and Fall of Carrier Aviation,” Center for a New American Security, October 2015.
10. Sam LaGrone, “Mabus: F-35 Will Be ‘Last Manned Strike Fighter’ the Navy, Marines ‘Will Ever Buy or Fly’,” USNI News, 15 April 2015.
11. Kyle Mizokami, “The Next Generation of Fighter Jets Is Already Taking Shape,” Popular Mechanics, 14 November 2017.
Ensign O’Donoghue, U.S. Naval Academy Class of 2018, majored in history and was the commanding officer of the Naval Academy Flying Squadron (VTNA). He reports to Pensacola for flight training this month.