Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
AIR VICE-MARSHAL
SIMON BOLLOM,
AIR VICE-MARSHAL
STUART BUTLER
AND AIR
VICE-MARSHAL
CHRIS NICKOLS
CBE
6 MAY 2008
Q60 Linda Gilroy: Naval forces are
often the first to be in theatre, or are used to gain access to
a new theatre, so can you tell us a bit about what provision has
been made to exploit that sort of situation and to presumably
tailor some UAV capability to be flown from the sea?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: Clearly
we keep our requirements constantly under review across all of
the three domains including the maritime domain. Given that the
UAV is a relatively new concept in naval parlance as well, the
one thing we have done is some trials work to make sure you can
physically launch and recover a UAV to a deck which, as I am sure
you can imagine, is not necessarily as easy as it is launching
it from a standard runway and recovering it back to the same.
We did some trials work run out of the Air Warfare Centre at Waddington
to prove that we can do that launch and recovery concept. We are
now keeping maritime UAVs under consideration as we look at the
capability required across the breadth of the naval maritime requirement.
Again if in filling some of the capability gaps of the future
it is decided that a UAV is the best way to fill them, then we
will expand on the research work that we have done already to
include a UAV programme in the future defence programme.
Q61 Linda Gilroy: That sounds as
if it is all at a very early stage.
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: It is.
Q62 Linda Gilroy: But in terms of
that capability, while ships and manned air vehicles are reducing
in numbers, the general requirement for ISTAR seems to be on the
up, it is increasing. Are there in fact known benefits to be gained
from operating UAVs as complementary capability to manned platforms?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: Absolutely
no question, and again if we did not have to do some form of balance
of investment I am sure we would have many more UAVs than we have
in all three domains. However, one comes to the appropriate balance
between for example the major fighting units and the equipment
that we have on them to gather and disseminate the process ISTAR,
so again it is all a matter of looking at this in capability terms,
and where we identify that there is a capability requirement,
we look at how best to fill it on and UAVs may well be one of
the methodologies in the future, particularly with the decrease
in platform numbers as you said.
Q63 Linda Gilroy: Are there any functioning
capabilities using that technology at the moment?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: In the
air environment and in the naval sector, no, but we have done
the trials work to prove it can be done in its very basic form
(although it is clearly very early days) and as we take forward
the debate for things like the Type 45 and future surface combatant,
if we find that the provision of ISTAR, in terms of the capability
work that we do, that a UAV is a good idea, then we will do that.
The other thing worth saying is that under the through-life capability
management system that we are doing at the moment, we are actually
running what we call a capability investigation on UAVs and that
will look at the sort of question that you are just posing, and
try and work out the question that is being asked in this capability
investigation which is what is the UK's future UAV requirement
and how might we best provide that in the future? That is certainly
sweeping up the requirement in the maritime domain. The good thing
is we are ahead of the game because we have looked and proven
that we can launch and recover a UAV to a deck on one of the current
platforms. The other thing I might mention is to bear in mind
that many of the UAVs we are using in the land environment, if
they are in the right place, can equally be employed in the maritime
environment, so again there is some flexibility, particular with
Reaper where you can operate it at some distance from land and
still provide the same capability that you would if you had launched
it from a carrier for example.
Q64 Linda Gilroy: In the case of
the Iran hostages affair, if that capability was far enough developed
would it have some utility in that sort of situation to prevent
it arising?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: I might
let Chris talk a little more about the actual incident itself,
but the answer very simply is, yes, of course it would, but as
would a helicopter, as would a fixed-wing surveillance aeroplane
of a larger type, so there is a number of things that would always
help in that situation, but having done the investigation we demonstrated
that, yes, it would have had some utility but not necessarily
something that would have changed the final outcome.
Q65 Linda Gilroy: In terms of opportunity
cost, is the difference between providing it through that kind
of surveillance or through UAV or helicopter and how would that
pan out?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: Again
bear in mind that this is always a balance of investment issue
because many of our warships already have a helicopter on board
so the balance of investment there is quite simply swayed in view
of the fact that you have already got a helicopter. For those
that do not have a helicopter then maybe UAV does win the balance
but, again, I come back to the point that we are constantly reviewing
the best way to provide capability across all three domains and
where we decide a UAV is the best option then that ultimately
would be what we put into the plan. Chris, I do not know whether
you want to say anything.
Air Vice-Marshal Nickols: I think
the only thing to say perhaps is that there were plenty of systems
to give sufficient situational awareness of what was happening
around them. The point that Air Vice-Marshal has already made
of course is that that particular incident took place very close
to land so there was a whole range of systems available and able
to operate in that area.
Q66 Linda Gilroy: In evidence we
have had from BAE Systems they refer to autonomous systems and
their prediction is that that is the way of the future. In that
context, which we can all picture, can you outline how such systems
compare with UAVs, and is the MoD developing a strategy in that
area?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: I think
in the context of the BAE work it is more about you can have a
UAV, and we already have examples where the UAV will get itself
airborne, take itself to an operating area, fly a very set route,
come back again, and land itself entirety autonomously of an operator.
There are clearly some areas where that is a real advantage. To
give you but one, we have programmes looking at things like coherent
change detection where if you fly over a route once and you then
fly over it again, you look at what has changed. Again autonomy
is really good there because you can be quite accurate on where
the flight paths are. You do need an element of being able to
dynamically task a UAV just as you would any other system, so,
yes, they are right in that autonomy does things like take pressure
off the UAV operator because it is quite an intensive operation.
These guys are working quite hard for very long hours and they
can relieve some of that pressure so, yes, autonomy is definitely
the way to go in some areas but in others it is not what you need,
you need that dynamic tasking that you get from having somebody
there able to steer it, albeit the vast majority of the way we
do UAVs now is a mouse click, it is not actually a physical stick
as you would have flying an aeroplane.
Q67 Linda Gilroy: So when BAE Systems
say to us that it is the way of the future, it is a way of the
future?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: It is
certainly a major contributor to the future but it will not be
the answer to everything.
Q68 Mr Hancock: In a shared time
version you would not necessarily need to recover the vehicle
at sea, would you?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: No, not
necessarily and again we had a look at a number of concepts and
again it is all a balance of investment. If you have a very cheap
UAV flying short distances from the ship, doing a short detection,
you might take the capability decision that the fact that you
lose it in the sea is not a big deal. If you have something more
sophisticated that flies that bit higher, gives your ISTAR reach
more distance, and hence it is probably more expensive, you probably
want to recover it to a vessel of some sort or you want to recover
it to land, indeed, and we did do both of those in fact, we did
actually fly from a ship back to a ship and from a ship to land.
Q69 Mr Hancock: If you think you
can get one off a Type-45 presumably you could get one off the
deck of a submarine if it was surfaced?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: Again,
it depends how big you want it because you could fly Desert Hawk
for example off a submarine very easily. I am not entirely sure
we would want to because, bearing in mind we are a complete nuclear
submarine force, we probably would want to keep the submarine
out of harm's way and pretty quiet. Part of the operational philosophy
is that you do not let people know where it is so I can think
of very few instances where you would want to do that, but you
could easily fly a Desert Hawk. To fly anything bigger would be
tricky.
Q70 Mr Jenkin: You referred to balance
in an earlier answer to one of my questions. Does the dramatically
increasing capability of UAVs actually bring into question what
the maritime aviation requirement will be, not just in terms of
numbers of manned aircraft that we might put on the carriers but
does it raise the question of whether traditional carriers as
we have envisaged them now more than ten years ago in the Strategic
Defence Review are still relevant?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: Part
of the answer to that question is it is not just the maritime
environment of course it is wider than that because I can envisage
in the far future much of what we do today can be done by UAVs.
At the moment we are not quite into that technical bracket but
for example we have a study ranging out into the 2035 era which
says how much of a mix can we have between manned aircraft platforms
and unmanned aircraft platforms in terms of both providing ISTAR
but also in terms of providing a strike capability, so an unmanned
combat air vehicle as against an unmanned air vehicle for ISTAR
purposes, yes, you are absolutely right, and as sensors get smaller
and UAVs get more capable then there will be an element of what
we do at the moment we can do with an UAV. Out into the 2035/2040
era, I cannot imagine that there will not be a requirement for
an element of manned because it gives you some flexibility that
an UAV simply cannot give you and also UAVs simply cannot produce
the power, the lift, all of the things you need for some of the
sensors that we have to carry in a big platform
Q71 Chairman: Why does a man, or
for that matter a woman, in a vehicle give it more power or lift?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: It does
not, it is just that to lift a bigger sensor, a more powerful
sensor, you need a bigger platform. If your question is can we
in 2035 or 2040 fly a larger platform unmanned, potentially, yes,
but again it depends where you want to do the processing of the
ISTAR data. It is all a matter of balance again because you may
find one of the reasons in our larger manned platforms we put
people in it is simply because it means we can analyse the data
on board and hence get it to the war fighter much quicker, depending
on the type of data, because if it is signals intelligence for
example you have to do quite a bit of analysis before that signals
intelligence is useful, and you can do it almost immediately if
you are doing the analysis at the point of collection rather than
having to ship it back, analyse it and push it out again. Again,
it is all a matter of balance.
Q72 Mr Hancock: Surely you would
have two different types of vehicle, would you not, you would
have the one that did the intelligence job and the one that did
the killing job and they would not necessarily be anywhere near
each other, would they?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: No, absolutely
not.
Q73 Mr Hancock: So you would not
put a high-risk surveillance vehicle with a lot of expensive sensors
on it in harm's way if you can avoid it—
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: Correct.
Q74 Mr Hancock: But once you know
where harm's way is, the vehicle you send there could be totally
different, could it not, because that is the vehicle that would
replace many of the jobs that your combat aircraft have to undertake
now with human beings on board, and you take a few humans out
of a plane you save 300 lbs in weight immediately.
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: The way
we tend to utilise the UAV, because of where we are with technology
largely, is to do the dull, dirty, dangerous and deep but, again,
as UAVs become more advanced, then we are doing more and more
with a UAV that we currently do with a manned platform. For example,
we are currently using UAVs, or have done in both Iraq and Afghanistan,
where previously we would have had to have used a manned platform
and, again, it is largely limited by the technology—power
and lift. When I talk about power I am talking about things like
cooling power, electrical power, et cetera, to operate the array
of sensors that you might need.
Chairman: Moving on to things like bandwidth
and frequencies, Richard Young-Ross?
Q75 Richard Younger-Ross: The NATO
Joint Air Power Competence Centre has some concern regarding both
bandwidth and frequencies. It feels that there was not enough
bandwidth to support unmanned aerial systems and there were no
dedicated frequencies for such systems, or indeed no international
standard frequencies for such systems. Could you outline those
issues and tell us just how critical they are to the working of
unmanned aerial vehicles?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: There
are two issues largely with the UAV, one is the command and control
route, ie how you tell the UAV to move around and how you tell
it where to move and the other is the dissemination of the data.
The first one is very simple: you have to almost have a 24/7 link
while the thing is airborne because you need to be able to command
it. Albeit, as BAE Systems have pointed out, the autonomy to an
extent can get around that and there are procedures in place where
for example if a UAV loses its link it does not simply dive into
the ground, it carries on on its last order or it recovers back
into a holding area where we can pick it up on a shorter range
link and land it. I have to say it is not a major user of the
bandwidth doing the command and control. The bigger issue is the
issue of disseminating the data, and the data can be very hungry
in terms of bandwidth particularly if you are trying to do real-time
full-motion video, for example. Again, wherever we can as we develop
the capability, we are looking both nationally and internationally
at how we can minimise that issue, and that can be done via a
whole variety of means. For example, in the Watchkeeper era we
were not necessarily getting into full-motion video all the time,
it will be frame at a time at set intervals. Equally, we are looking
at what is the best way to disseminate the information. If you
transmit a picture over the Internet, for example, you can transmit
it in a number of different formats. What we are looking at is
what is the format that uses the absolute minimum bandwidth transmission
to get it over the system. Again, we are looking at a lot of techniques
as to how to do that. The other thing is we engage in the World
Radio Conference to make sure that the military bandwidth that
we require is allocated to us, and then we use it in the most
effective manner, because of course we have to pay for bandwidth
now, as you may well be aware. A number of things are coming together
which minimise the bandwidth problem. This is very much a personal
view having worked in this arena for the past three or four years.
We will get to the point where if we keep using bandwidth we will
saturate the commander with information. Of course it comes to
the point where you have to make a compromise on the fact that
you cannot give him too much so you need to give him just enough
to give him that information superiority that he needs as a commander,
but no more. There is a bit of a balance there and again it is
a bit difficult. One of my colleagues has passed me some useful
information to bring up on a previous point. One of the other
reasons of course why some of the bigger platforms that we utilise
are used in the manner they are is because they can store and
analyse the data on board and they do not need to push all of
the information they collect down to the ground, so again it is
another way of saving bandwidth. We are very bandwidth conscious,
I would suggest, in terms of cost, in terms of making sure that
when the commander requires the information we are able to push
it to him, but also in terms of the fact we need to command and
control and we need to provide the right data at the right time
and the right place.
Q76 Richard Younger-Ross: What about
dedicated frequencies?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: Again
we go to a great deal of effort to make sure the frequencies we
use are allocated to us but of course if you take Iraq for example
we do not control the frequency usage in Iraq. We can bid for
it just like we can in any other place, but the sovereignty of
the bandwidth relies on the host nation country. I will be the
first to say it has caused us problems in the past, and one of
the things we have learned is when you put a system into a theatre
you really need to have dialable bandwidth, so if the one you
are attempting to use is not a good one you can move the dial
a little bit and transmit on another one. Dynamic bandwidth management
is something we are becoming increasing adept at.
Q77 Robert Key: I spent a fascinating
day at the National Air Traffic Control Centre and I realised
just how complex the management of airspace is over Europe, more
specifically over Great Britain and the oceans. Am I right that
any unmanned aerial vehicle cannot comply with either visual flight
rules or instrument flight rules?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: Up to
this point we have not operated UAVs in segregated airspace. We
always have to operate it within a Danger Area simply because,
as you rightly say, there are a number of facets of manned flight
that we currently cannot achieve with a UAV, and one of them is
`sense and avoid'; we cannot teach a UAV what to do.
Q78 Robert Key: That is why the European
Defence Agency in January announced a €500,000 contract with
a consortium, including defence and aerospace interests, to try
and find the way through this. Is the Ministry of Defence part
of that programme?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: We are
engaged on a number of different programmes, not least of which
is ASTRAEA, where we are attempting to come up with solutions
to exactly that type of problem, both nationally and internationally
I might add.
Q79 Robert Key: So until we make
progress with that, you can only fly UAVs in this country in a
danger area?
Air Vice-Marshal Butler: That
is correct.
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