Memorandum from Northrop Grumman
In response to the House of Commons Defence
Select Committee's request for evidence for the Defence Committee
inquiry into ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition
and Reconnaissance) and the role of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV),
Northrop Grumman is pleased to submit the following information.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. This submission records the views of
Northrop Grumman on UAVs in providing ISTAR capability based on
the company's extensive experience in the United States in developing
UAVs with the US Air Force, US Army and the US Navy.
2. UAVs are transforming the battlefield
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Future conflicts will see their role
expanded dramatically. In war-fighting situations, they offer
shortened target engagement timescales compared to conventional
platforms. For peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions, they
offer vital persistent ISTAR capabilities. Within the US Armed
Forces their use is already widespread, while, in the UK, the
MoD has made UAVs a strategic priority.
3. ISTAR is a key military capability that
generates and delivers specific information and intelligence to
decision makers at all levels in support of the planning and conduct
of military operations. UAVs play an important role in Network
Centric Warfare/Network Enabled Capability concepts in both the
US and Europe and are becoming a key element in the inventories
of the world's militaries. Full exploitation of the operational
benefits of UAVs is only possible in a joint integrated and network-enabled
system.
4. Northrop Grumman has a 60-year history
of providing more than 100,000 unmanned systems to military customers
in the US and around the world. Its current portfolio spans a
variety of different platforms: the high-altitude, long-endurance
RQ-4 Global Hawk for the US Air Force and Navy; the MQ-8B Fire
Scout helicopter for the US Navy and Army with the ability to
take off and land autonomously on any aviation-capable warship
and at prepared and unprepared landing zones; the MQ-5B Hunter
medium-altitude UAV first fielded for the US Army in 1996 to provide
dedicated reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition
capability, relaying information real-time via video link to ground
forces; and the stealthy X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS)
for the US Navy. The Navy UCAS will perform the first ever at-sea
aircraft carrier launches and recoveries with a fixed-wing unmanned
air system in addition to autonomous refuelling in midair demonstrating
the capability of an autonomous, low-observable air vehicle.
5. The Global Hawk UAV developed for the
US Air Force is a fully autonomous high altitude long endurance
unmanned aerial system. It can autonomously, taxi, take off, fly,
remain on station while capturing imagery, return and land. It
provides persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance
and is designed to fly up to 65,000 ft for more than 35 hours.
Global Hawk is monitored during its flight by ground-based operators
who can alter the system's flight path and sensor operations.
BACKGROUND
6. Northrop Grumman is a global defence
and technology company and provides products, services and solutions
in systems integration, defence electronics, information technology,
advanced aircraft, shipbuilding, and space technology. With headquarters
in Los Angeles, California, the company employs more than 120,000
people in 25 countries serving international military, government
and commercial customers.
7. Northrop Grumman has a long standing relationship
with and presence in the UK dating back more than 20-years. The
UK remains a critically important market for the company as a
supplier base and a source for technology partners. Northrop Grumman's
annual spend in the defence and aerospace industry supports thousands
of jobs around the UK generating intellectual property and facilitating
exports. There are more than 700 Northrop Grumman employees in
locations across the UK at Chester, Coventry, Fareham, London,
New Malden, Peterborough, RAF Waddington and Solihull, providing
avionics, communications, electronic warfare systems, marine navigation
systems, C4I and mission planning, aircraft whole life support,
robotics, IT systems and software development.
MEDIUM ALTITUDE
EXTENDED RANGE
CAPABILITY
8. The Northrop Grumman MQ-5B Hunter UAV
has been the workhorse unmanned aerial system for the US Army
since it was first fielded in 1996. It has more than 60,000 total
flight hours and 36,000 combat flight hours. Deployments include
Macedonia in support of KFOR from 1999 to 2002 and continuous
deployment in Iraq from 2003 to the present. It has also been
deployed with the US Department of Homeland Security in customs
and border patrol operations.
9. The Hunter MQ-5B is a Brigade level reconnaissance,
surveillance, target acquisition, and weapons platform. It has
an endurance of 21 hours, airspeed of 80 Knots cruise and 110
Knots dash and an altitude of 18,000 feet to 20,000 feet. The
Hunter can carry a payload weight of up to 430 lbs. The standard
payload is an electro-optic (EO)/infra-red (IR) sensor.
10. It is currently the only operational
UAV with a heavy fuel engine which provides logistics supportability
with armoured units on the ground. Hunter can be operated by forward
deployed operators from unimproved runways providing high military
utility to mobile forces. The aircraft has highly redundant mission
and propulsion systems, has an auto take-off and landing system,
and has demonstrated operational availability of 99.3%.
11. The Hunter unmanned aerial system is
operated and maintained on a 24 hour per day, seven days per week
basis in Iraq by a contractor team under a Government owned-contractor
operated (GOCO) arrangement in support of INSCOM and the Combat
Aviation Brigade which deploys the aircraft.
12. A video can be made available to the
Committee showing an actual engagement by the US Army, 25th Combat
Aviation Brigade with terrorists during an improvised explosive
device (IED) emplacement. This video will demonstrate the utility
of UAVs in the counter IED scenario.
HIGH ALTITUDE
LONG ENDURANCE
CAPABILITY
13. The Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Block 10 Global
Hawk UAV is currently supporting the US Air Force. To date three
Global Hawks are deployed in support of US military operations,
logging more than 15,700 combat hours conducting intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance missions and with more than 21,000
total programme flight hours and 95% mission effectiveness. These
UAVs are operated overseas by USAF pilots from a mission control
element stationed at Beale Air Force Base in Northern California.
The UAV is equipped with EO/IR and synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
sensors to provide high-quality real-time imagery.
14. Global Hawk has been used in border
patrol missions in Iraq since 2003. Missions are typically of
24-hour duration. Imagery is collected using SAR and EO/IR sensors.
The long endurance allows multiple passes over the same target.
Early in a mission the operator may use SAR. In good weather conditions
this may be switched to using EO/IR cameras on the same target.
The IR capability can be used at night to monitor changes in activities.
Global Hawk can also be used before and after IED missions allowing
pre-detonation and ground patrol route planning. Images collected
are transmitted via satellite to imagery analysts at the Distributed
Common Ground Station. The high resolution data is exploited within
20 minutes and the raw imagery is posted on a secure military
website within minutes for use by anyone with access around the
world.
15. The Global Hawk has autonomous high-altitude,
long-endurance (HALE) flight characteristics. The air vehicle
flies at altitudes up to 65,000 feet for up to 35 hours at speeds
approaching 340 knots. It can image an area the size of the state
of Illinois in just one mission. During its trials with the US
Air Force's 31st Test and Evaluation Squadron and during its first
deployment in Operation Enduring Freedom, the Global Hawk system
was shown to be flexible and dynamically re-taskable.
16. Two Block 10 Global Hawks are also currently
being used in the U.S. Navy's Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration
(GHMD) programme. Stationed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River,
Maryland, the air systems are being used to help define the concept
of operations for maritime surveillance.
17. The US Air Force's desire to expand
Global Hawk's role supporting the service's ISR mission launched
the development of a more capable and powerful unmanned surveillance
system, the next-generation Block 20 Global Hawk. Its first flight
was in March 2007.
18. The larger more capable Block 20 aircraft
will carry up to 3,000 pounds of internal payload and will operate
with two-and-a-half times the power of its predecessor. Its open
system architecture, a so-called "plug-and-play" environment,
will accommodate new sensors and communication systems as they
are developed to help military customers quickly evaluate and
adopt new technologies.
19. The US Navy has recently selected a
marinized version of the RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned air vehicle
as the platform for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned
Aircraft System (BAMS UAS) programme. This will provide the US
Navy with a persistent maritime intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance (ISR) system to protect the fleet and provide a
capability to detect, track, classify, and identify maritime and
littoral targets.
20. In October 2003, the US Air Force demonstrated
Global Hawk's capabilities to the German Ministry of Defence (MoD)
in northern Germany. A Block 10 Global Hawk equipped with an EADS
electronic intelligence (ELINT) sensor prototype performed a series
of flight demonstrations over a six-week deployment.
21. The Euro Hawk unmanned signals intelligence
(SIGINT) surveillance and reconnaissance system is being developed
and tested for the German MoD by EuroHawk GmbH, a joint-venture
company formed by Northrop Grumman and EADS. With a wing span
larger than a commercial airliner's, the Euro Hawk UAS will serve
as the German Air Force's HALE SIGINT system.
22. Global Hawk has its origins in the 1995
High-Altitude Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Advanced Concept
Technology Demonstrator (HAE UAV ACTD) programme initiated by
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Defense
Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO).
23. Global Hawk is the only unmanned aerial
system (UAS) to meet the military and the Federal Administration
Aviation's airworthiness standards and have approval to fly regular
flights within U.S. airspace. The system is continuing its operational
support having logged more than 10,000 combat flight hours with
95 percent mission effectiveness.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
24. Major technology challenges for UAVs
include: bandwidth and processing speed; air traffic control (domestically
and in war zones where to minimise the potential for collisions
between UAVs and manned aircraft); cooperative control of multiple
UAVs by a single operator; and coordination of formations of unmanned
aircraft, ground vehicles, and underwater vehicles.
25. The ability of one unmanned aircraft
to operate autonomously but in conjunction with other unmanned
systems may bring the greatest gain to combat forces. Technology
is being developed to enable UAVs flying in formation reconfigure
themselves according to mission needs.
26. Coordination among UAVs being used in
theatre is critical to avoid redundancies, misinterpretation of
facts on the ground, and radar interference.
27. The culmination of efforts to integrate
full sense-and-avoid capabilities into UAVs will open the way
for UAVs to migrate into civilian roles and applications. These
will include disaster relief, crowd control, anti-terrorism surveillance,
maritime search and support to the coastguard, police, fire and
intelligence services.
CONCLUSION
28. Northrop Grumman has a 60-year history
of providing more than 100,000 unmanned systems to military customers
in the US and around the world, from the high-altitude, long-endurance
fully autonomous Global Hawk for the US Air Force and Navy to
the Fire Scout helicopter for the US Navy and Army, to the Hunter
medium-altitude UAV for the US Army and the stealthy X-47B Unmanned
Combat Air System (UCAS) for the US Navy capable of at-sea aircraft
carrier launches and recoveries.
29. The Hunter UAV has been the workhorse
unmanned aerial system for the US Army since 1996 and has more
than 36,000 combat flight hours. It has been on continuous deployment
in Iraq from 2003 to the present.
30. The Global Hawk UAV is currently supporting
the US Air Force and has been used in border patrol missions in
Iraq since 2003. It has more than 15,700 combat hours conducting
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.
31. Northrop Grumman continues to invest
significantly in the UK market in providing facilities and technology
to support UK Forces. We have considerable ISTAR domain expertise
that we wish to bring into the UK market and can contribute by
providing systems integration and interoperability expertise.
32. We are committed to bringing advanced
technology into the UK defence market to accelerate the fielding
of next-generation military capability and are able and willing
to participate fully in helping to meet the UK's requirements
in the ISTAR domain and to working with the MoD and the UK supply
chain to achieve these objectives.
6 May 2008
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