Inside the Air Force The Air Force's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle program could fall victim to President Bush's suggestion that the Pentagon should skip a generation of military hardware in favor of next-generation systems offering superior advantages over U.S. adversaries, according to Defense Department and industry sources.
February 16, 2001
Controversial UAV Could Get Leapfrogged By Bush Administration
The Global Hawk, manufactured by Northrop Grumman's Ryan Aeronautical, is a high-altitude UAV used for collecting imagery. David Oliver, acting under secretary of defense for acquisition, logistics and technology, is expected today to shift Global Hawk from an advanced concept technology demonstration into a full program by approving its entry into an engineering and manufacturing development phase, sources say.
However, the Defense Acquisition Board review is raising some questions in many observers' minds; namely, some sources question whether the Pentagon can get more bang for its buck by investing in a stealthier system that has increased endurance and can carry more sensors per sortie.
Global Hawk is often compared to the U-2, which was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. The U-2 has been the Air Force's primary, acknowledged, high-altitude intelligence gathering platform for more than 40 years, and the aircraft has undergone several major upgrades during its tenure. According to an industry source, the Air Force has invested about $1.4 billion in U-2 upgrades during the past 11 years.
The U-2 can simultaneously collect signals intelligence and imagery, but its endurance is limited by the amount of time its pilot is able to operate the aircraft. Presently, Global Hawk is unable to simultaneously collect both forms of intelligence because of weight and onboard power restrictions. However, Global Hawk supporters tout the platform's obvious advantage: the ability to fly an unmanned vehicle for up to 36 hours at a time and more than 13,000 nautical miles, according to Northrop data.
Pentagon sources say the Air Force has begrudgingly crafted a spiral sensor upgrade program for Global Hawk that would allow the UAV to carry more sophisticated equipment. However, the weight restriction inherent in the UAV's airframe would require the service to operate two separate fleets, one for signals intelligence and one for imagery. The cost of this measure -- including an early retirement for the U-2 -- has moved many to reconsider the Defense Department's options.
Some say the Pentagon should take the lessons learned from Global Hawk ACTD and U-2 efforts and craft a new program that will reap the benefits of both. Survivability, stealthiness and endurance would be among the attributes sought for such a future system, industry, congressional and service sources say.
Most sources agree that the limiting factors to a leap-ahead technology program are funding and time. Shutting down Global Hawk in favor of designing and building a completely new platform would be costly and take a significant amount of time, which the service is unsure it can spare, these sources note. Recent upgrades to the U-2 -- including a defensive system upgrade, a modern cockpit and new angle-of-attack gauges that help pilots prevent engine stalls -- could make the fleet last until the Air Force can field a new weapon system. However, relying on the U-2 to outlive its historical attrition rate would be a gamble, sources say.
U-2 attrition could lead to a gap in the Pentagon's high-altitude reconnaissance collection capabilities as soon as 2006. Although some say the most cost-effective and immediate solution would be to build more U-2s, even many in the U-2 community admit that the Air Force may be ready to adopt a new method of collecting imagery. However, these sources warn that the service should ensure the reliability and utility of whatever platform eventually takes over the U-2 mission before investing heavily in it.
Global Hawk was originally billed as a complement to the U-2, not a replacement for it. However, the program received much attention during the last year of the Clinton administration. Top Pentagon officials pushed hard -- at one point advocating a nearly $1 billion boost for the program -- to accelerate the UAV's sensor integration schedule and procurement time line and seal the UAV's future as the high-altitude intelligence collector for the Air Force. However, those efforts, spearheaded by then-Pentagon acquisition czar Jacques Gansler, failed in December when the Defense Department decided to fund only the "baseline" program, which calls for a snail's pace procurement plan of two of the UAVs per year.
Intelligence community sources note that the Air Force still has some kinks to sort out before it could field and reliably operate the UAV, even as a complement to the U-2. For instance, the service has not developed a plan to exploit the increased data that would be generated from a two- or threefold increase in loiter time. However, some service sources counter these concerns by stating that processing, exploiting and disseminating data is the responsibility of the intelligence community.
Additionally, service sources point out that the Air Force has not developed a firm concept of operations for the UAV. Specifically, these sources question whether the Air Force would base Global Hawk in the United States and take advantage of its "long legs" to send it to hot spots across the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. Another option is to base Global Hawk abroad and take further advantage of the enhanced loiter time. Most agree the UAV is an "immature system" that is not ready to take over the U-2 mission as envisioned by Gansler. Rather than spend time and money on the Global Hawk, some say the Air Force may be better off starting from scratch.
President Bush has ordered a sweeping review of all major Defense Department programs and strategies before he commits to more military spending. Sources say this review could free up some resources to spend on the high-altitude reconnaissance issue. However, many Pentagon needs are unfunded, so some sources say the challenge would be convincing the administration that intelligence gathering is important enough to fund as soon as possible.
During the review, new requirements for a U-2 replacement may emerge. Already, a concept called the U-X has been discussed at Air Combat Command. U-X is more than a next-generation U-2 because it requires a low-observable, penetrating and unmanned solution, industry sources say. Specifically, the U-X should be able to penetrate hostile airspace and loiter directly over a target to capture an image and relay it back to a higher command authority. Because U-X could, at least in concept, photograph targets from overhead, signals intelligence would not be necessary for its mission (signals intelligence is often used to "cross-cue" or triangulate and pinpoint a target). However, sources say the new administration could combine the U-X requirements with the signals intelligence tasks now handled by the U-2 to form a single solution than can be tailored to handle standoff and penetration missions.
U-Xs requirements are shaping up to be similar to those of an earlier program that was killed by the Pentagon, according to sources.
"They killed the wrong program," one source said of Lockheed Martin's DarkStar, a low-observable, penetrating reconnaissance UAV, which was terminated in 1999. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the "Air Force chose the range of Global Hawk over DarkStar's stealth," a decision that some question.
Less of a challenge for a leap ahead is the technology associated with building a next-generation U-2 or Global Hawk replacement, sources say. Already, officials at Northrop have notional plans to build a Block 20 Global Hawk that would increase the airframe's size and power output, making it more on a par with the U-2's capabilities. Lockheed officials also have burgeoning plans to build an unmanned version of the U-2, sources add. A third company, Scaled Composites, LLC, has built a high-altitude manned platform called Proteus that can carry various 2,000-pound payloads. Sensors and communications equipment in development today could be easily adapted to a new platform, sources say.
If the administration opts to scrap Global Hawk in favor of a next-generation technology, the Air Force would likely be required to declare a new start and commence a competition, sources say. Any of these companies could bid for the project, and this, according to a congressional source, would ensure a robust competition that would yield innovation and cost savings for the Pentagon.
A Pentagon spokeswoman did not respond by press time to inquiries about the Bush administration's position on the future of Global Hawk.
The Bush administration has not yet said when it will complete its review of defense programs, although many believe it will be done before a defense budget request is submitted in late March or early April.
-- Amy Butler