Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-227)
MR JOHN
HOWE CB OBE, MR
VICTOR CHAVEZ,
MR NICK
MILLER AND
MR CHRIS
DAY
3 JUNE 2008
Q220 Mr Havard: Should it be needed
to be done it would be capable to do that in that way in the future,
would it?
Mr Howe: I would not care to answer
that directly. I should not be at all surprised. It is a capable
aircraft, which is capable of carrying things. It can carry reasonably
heavy payloads for surveillance purposes; it can carry payloads
for other purpose, I have no doubt.
Q221 Mr Crausby: The MoD acknowledges
that there are shortfalls in the direction, processing and dissemination
side of ISTAR and your memorandum tells us that there is a strong
value for money argument for the Watchkeeper system "to provide
the basis for the UK based NEC Ground Infrastructure exploitation
and dissemination capability". Could you tell us something
about that? To what extent could the Watchkeeper Ground Infrastructure
address the shortfalls; and is the MoD showing an interest in
your proposals?
Mr Chavez: I am more than happy
to discuss it. Just to come back if I may, Chairman, to labour
the point slightly about the issue of exploitation of information
and the difference between things like Hermes 450 and Watchkeeper.
Hermes 450 is like having a satellite TV feed coming into your
home, and you can watch it on the screen and, if you want, you
can record it to your hard disk video recorder and so on. If you
actually want to come back and say at a later date, "I actually
want one frame of video out of what I've recorded in that programme
two hours ago", then it is quite difficult to find it. If
you actually said, "Okay, my neighbour wants that, and he
wants to do it from his house", you cannot do it. Watchkeeper
is actually more akin to taking that stream of data and logging
it into databases so that you can actually retrieve all of that
data at a later date; in the same way that you type into Google
"I want a picture of the Houses of Parliament", and
you come up with lots of images of the Houses of Parliament. Under
Watchkeeper you can actually say, "I'm interested in this
particular area and I want the latest data of information that
was taken", or, "I want it between June 1 and June 3
2008". Anybody using the system, anywhere on the battlefield,
can do that sort of retrieval over the very low data rate communication
systems that exist on the battlefield. That is the reason why
actually setting in place Watchkeeper will allow a huge increase
in terms of responses to commanders' requests for intelligence.
At the moment so much data is stored but it is not easily accessible;
it is not easily catalogued; and it is accessible typically through
one system. Watchkeeper provides a distributed information system
where any number of users can access all of that data. Watchkeeper
at the moment, the ground information infrastructure is really
designed around the various sensors that are going to be on board
Watchkeeper—the electro-optic cameras, the infra-red cameras
and synthetic aperture radar; but there is nothing to stop that
being extended to the information that comes off another UAV,
a Reaper UAV, or off a Global Hawk UAV, or using different sensors.
If you were to add in communications intelligence sensors or electronic
support measures which detect signals, there is nothing to stop
you actually using that information infrastructure to share that
information. That would fulfil part of potentially the requirement
known as DABINETT. As the MoD lodged in its information memorandum,
DABINETT is certainly one if not the highest priority ISTAR
programming in the eyes of MoD; because at the moment MoD has
got quite a lot of collectors of information but it has not got
in place the infrastructure to really get best value out of that,
and that is why there is such a high priority at the moment.
Q222 Mr Holloway: Could you use Watchkeeper
for locally disrupting enemy communications? Could you mine this
data you referred to in order to identify threats, probably against
a slightly more sophisticated enemy, but using specific bits of
military kit?
Mr Chavez: In terms of disrupting
enemy communications, there is nothing to stop a UAV platform,
such as Watchkeeper or indeed the Hermes 450 platform, being used
as a jamming system to disrupt communications.
Mr Miller: The systems are modular
and can adapt different payloads. At the moment we have a requirement
for electro-optic infra-red and radar for Watchkeeper; but of
course in the future there will be additional payloads of that
nature and others coming on board -hyperspectural links communications
infrastructure links; so it is an adaptable system with a plug
and play facility. That is the essence of these UAVs.
Q223 Mr Holloway: Mining the data?
Mr Chavez: Mining the data, certainly
there are a number of tools; and indeed Watchkeeper will come
with a number of tools to help target recognition and so on.
Q224 Mr Jenkins: I read occasionally
about the automatic nature of the systems now developing. I see
them in civilian life, but can you give me an example of where
you think this automatic system would improve the intelligence,
the decision-making procedures?
Mr Day: Potentially one of the
most significant strengths of UAVs is that we all think about
flying a UAV around with either a joystick or perhaps just clicking
several positions on a map and the aircraft flies around, and
that is fine; that is great for conventional mission planning;
but actually we must never forget that the sole purpose of that
air vehicle being up there is to collect imagery and the primary
piece of equipment is that sensor; putting that sensor at the
right point on the ground. One area of automation is, the guy
does not actually dictate where the aircraft is going to fly,
he just says, "I want to see that point on the ground with
the sensor". He marks the ground and says, "That is
a sensor point", and the air vehicle works out how it maintains
that sensor on that point on the ground for as long as he may
wish. That is one clear area. The other thing is, at the end of
the day if he wants to cover a certain area, he might say, "I
don't want to watch a point on the ground; I want to cover a whole
specific area". When you are up there you have got winds
from difficult directions; the aircraft does not want to do it
in a particular way; you can just say to the air vehicle, "I
want you to carry out an optimised path over that whole area",
and it will sit there and work out exactly how it is going to
fly that sensor across the ground in order to effectively survey
that whole area. There are these little smart tools, but it is
linked into the flight control system, that allow the system to
effectively be more autonomous, be smarter but, very importantly,
to take some of the load off the guys who are sat in those ground
stations for many hours on end.
Q225 Chairman: May I ask a question
which arises out of a memorandum we have had from L3 Communications
UK which says that, "There needs essentially to be a mix
of assets, some of them manned, some of them very large, very
high, some of them much lower, but with manning in the loop in
much of the system". Would you agree with that? Does there
need to be a broad mix in order to provide the best intelligence
capability that you can?
Mr Day: Without a doubt, and I
go back to the statement I made earlier about the massive payloads.
If we want some of the very complex payloads that we are alluding
to in terms of being able to jam COMS and various other bits and
pieces then you are talking about payloads that are very significant,
and that actually need real time control, not through a data link
but by a man sat in a seat on the actual platform. When you are
looking at some of these very complex fused sensor suites, yes,
you do need a mix of manned and unmanned to make that happen today.
Q226 Mr Havard: Can I ask a question
I have asked of others, which is about navigation. This dual location
business, whether it is shooting your very difficult single target
that is running away, or whatever it is, this thing has got to
navigate somehow or another. It is not going to have a map and
a pencil, is it? If somebody denies you various capability, either
GPS, all the rest of it, where are we with that? We depend on
operational sovereignty, so what resilience is going to be built
into these things so they are still going to operate on a range
of systems, Galileo or GPS or whatever it is?
Mr Day: We were very aware at
the outset of the Watchkeeper journey about the fragility of GPS,
which is where the world is going to. We have them in our cars;
we have them in our passenger aircraft. We are well aware there
is a fragility there. At the end of the day, when our guys most
need this capability for it to be denied because of a simple jammer
or whatever was not acceptable. As we discussed earlier, future-proofing
Watchkeepr, what are we going to do to get around this? There
are techniques to get around that. A lot of work done in the US
has been looked at. There is a lot of work which has been done
in the UK. We do have instruments onboard the aircraft that allow
us to hold position quite accurately. We have the ability because,
at the end of the day, we are looking at a data link which could
be seen effectively like a radar. You can use the data link to
give you some positional data. There are ways of getting around
it. The key message I would like to get across I suppose is that
we were aware of that sensitivity ten years ago, and we have made
certain that Watchkeeper will be one of the few UAV systems in
the battlefield tomorrow that can actually support ops should
that particular condition exist.
Q227 Chairman: I think we ought to
move on. Thank you very much, Mr Howe, to you and your team for
a very helpful briefing. You have brought it to life in a way
which has been most interesting. Thank you for your evidence.
Mr Howe: Thank you very much,
Chairman.
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