Examination of Witnesses (Questions 228-239)
DR GRAHAM
THORNTON, MR
JOHN BROOKS
AND MR
ED WALBY
3 JUNE 2008
Q228 Chairman: Good morning, Mr Brooks.
Are you the boss?
Mr Brooks: My name is John Brooks.
I am the President of Northrop Grumman International, and it is
truly an honour for us to be here to talk to you about UAVs. It
is a subject that we have been focussed on for about 60 years,
and we look forward to the dialogue with you very much.
Dr Thornton: I am Graham Thornton,
the Managing Director for Northrop Grumman in the UK. Lest you
think we are just an American company visiting today—we
have 700 employees in the UK and about £400 million of sales
into the MoD; and we have some key programmes like the AWACS aircraft
support and the Cutlass unmanned vehicle for bomb disposal. So
we are in the UK and have been for many decades. I thought I would
give that as a background, but my colleagues are principally here
obviously to talk about a US-based capability.
Mr Walby: I am a retired US Air
Force Colonel. I am Director of Business Development for Unmanned
Systems in San Diego for Northrop Grumman, primarily Global Hawk.
In my last assignment in the Air Force I was the first commander
to take Global Hawk into combat as a technology demonstrator that
converted to operational deployment.
Q229 Chairman: Thank you very much
for coming to give us a United States perspective. I am well aware,
Dr Thornton, of what you said about Northrop Grumman having a
significant British presence as well. Your memorandum says that
in the United States use of UAVs has already been widespread,
whereas the Ministry of Defence in the UK is just making it a
strategic priority. Does that imply that the Ministry of Defence
in the UK has been a bit late?
Mr Brooks: I certainly have no
expertise on which to comment on the Ministry's progress, but
I would point out to you that in the United States we have benefited
from some period of time and some very large investments of dollars
which have enabled us to field some of the advanced capabilities
that we will talk about today. Perhaps the point that we would
commend to you is that, because of the very close relationship
between our nations, in essence the UK has the ability to capitalise
on these investments, and that indeed may be a legitimate strategy
for the Ministry to take.
Q230 Chairman: Yes. This may be a
question which applies to all defence issues, but there must be
a gap in view of the spending of the dollars you are referring
to between what the United States is doing in UAVs and what the
British are doing in UAVs, and because of the size of the dollar
gap presumably that gap is widening. Would you agree with that?
Mr Brooks: I would focus more
in terms of the capabilities that we are working to generate—and
you heard some discussion earlier of the different levels of technology
and the different missions. The United States I think is investing
in some of the higher end capabilities, the more advanced capabilities,
and particularly investing development dollars there. Perhaps
what we may see in MoD is investment in capabilities that may
allow them to capitalise on those capabilities rather than duplicating
the development investment.
Q231 Mr Crausby: In April you won
a contract for the US Navy's BAMS programme which offers a marinised
version of your Global Hawk UAV. Can you tell us what sort of
capability the marinised version of Global Hawk will deliver?
Will this UAV be required to operate from ships?
Mr Brooks: No, sir, it is a land
based capability, capitalising on the extraordinary capability
of Global Hawk to go very, very long ranges and search very large
areas. Just as an example, in the US we say that one Global Hawk
is capable of searching the entire State of Illinois in a single
mission. That may not be terribly useful to you and perhaps I
could offer that the combination of England and Wales are about
the same volume as the State of Illinois; or, to put it in a operational
context, if we think back to the horrific tsunami in the South
Pacific of a few years ago, one Global Hawk is capable of surveilling
the entire region affected by that tsunami in one mission. We
take that basic capability and then customise it and optimise
it for maritime surveillance. I would ask my colleague to offer
a few thoughts on how we went about customising it for maritime
surveillance.
Mr Walby: Just to clarify in terms
of the capability of the sensors that the Air Force carries, John's
analogy to England and Wales or the State of Illinois, it actually
has the ability to image every square inch of that territory,
not just survey it. That awesome capability that was part of the
US Air Force requirement was to carry electro-optical infra-red
radar imagery, as well as signals intelligence collection, which
includes communications intelligence and electronic intelligence.
Those together met a need of the US Air Force. The Navy's requirement
was to take it one step further; because in the Air Force's requirement
set that I was a part of in the development when I was in the
Air Force was essentially a land based operation where you would
be moving from friendly territory into enemy territory; whereas
the Navy's requirement was based on a 360 degree view and protection
of the carrier battle group and battle space in the littorals.
Their requirement was a 360 degree continuous presence in terms
of the sensor field of view. What they are offering and have accepted
with our BAMS programme, Broad Area Maritime Surveillance programme,
is a 360 degree EO/IR system, and a 360 degree radar system, and
at some point some form of electronic intelligence collection.
Their requirement had to be 360 for continuous tracking of vessels
and things on the sea. Global Hawk has been designed to be, as
John has mentioned, modular and tailorable to whatever sensor
capability you wish to add.
Q232 Mr Crausby: The MoD does not
appear to have a requirement for a maritime UAV. Does that surprise
you? Is that in some way linked to the difficulties with operating
UAVs from ships? Can you tell us something about that?
Mr Brooks: No, I do not think
it relates one way or another to a ship. We do in fact have an
advanced rotary wing UAV that has already demonstrated the ability
to autonomously land and take-off from ships at sea. If you go
back to the beginning of the United States Air Force Global Hawk
programme you will find that it was after the extraordinary power
of that capability was demonstrated that other nations began to
express interest and engage in dialogue and, in a few select cases,
were given the authority to pursue that platform. We anticipate
that with the US Navy's selection of this platform international
interest is rising; and we expect further dialogue on that capability
which, in this case, will only be made available we would anticipate
to countries in which there is a strong relationship of trust
and partnership.
Q233 Chairman: A rotary wing UAV
that can land on ships, is there a United States requirement for
that at the moment?
Mr Brooks: Yes, sir, there is.
The United States Navy has that requirement initially for a class
of ships known as the "littoral combat ship", because
it would allow them to project sensors over the horizon as they
examine areas in the littorals. They have recently expanded that
to include other classes of ships and it can operate from any
ship which is helo-capable.
Q234 Mr Jenkins: How big is Fire
Scout?
Mr Brooks: It is a highly adapted
version of a Schweizer small manned two-person helicopter. That
provides you essentially a size in rough approximation. We could
put one probably here in the middle, if we were to displace the
ladies!
Chairman: Which we would not dream of
doing!
Q235 Mr Holloway: This is probably
not a line the Chairman wants us to go too far down, but can I
ask Mr Thornton, could you, in your company, provide a sovereign,
more capable product to the UK than Watchkeeper for less money?
Dr Thornton: In principle, yes.
The sovereign aspect, by which I take it you mean UK based intellectual
property, that is a model we have used and created already or
have it in programmes, so it is not an issue. The only question
mark is on ITAR but that will be replaced by the ratified Defence
Treaty. We have a long record of defence technology into the UK,
so that may not be a barrier. Have we got the right vehicle? Yes.
I take the point that the Thales' representatives made that there
are really several classes of air vehicle, and I think Global
Hawk at the high end gives you total area coverage, admittedly
down to great detail, but can you afford multiple Global Hawks
to do the sort of role you are doing in Afghanistan, no, it is
not appropriate, so you need a medium-sized model. In principle,
we could supply that.
Q236 Chairman: Dr Thornton, from
your knowledge of British military requirements, do you believe
that there should be a requirement for a maritime or marinised—there
must be a difference—UAV?
Dr Thornton: As long as one does
not say marinated!
Q237 Chairman: Indeed.
Dr Thornton: Over the last two
years I have been with the company I have made a very strong personal
push to have Fire Scout recognized, and perhaps accepted by the
MoD coastguard fisheries protection people. We have gone so far
as to have discussions with the BT Group in relation to the River
class of vessel. What Fire Scout does give you is flexibility,
because you can afford more of them. You can have ship-borne operations
with Fire Scout without the need for pilots, it is an autonomous
vehicle. It has a long endurance, eight hours plus. It can carry
all the sensors we have been talking about earlier. It has about
a 600 lb payload (nearly 300 kg). Is there a need for maritime
surveillance? Yes, because particularly in areas such as the Straits
of Hormuz in the Gulf of Arabia one needs forward-looking sensing
for any group of ships. There is no point in taking ships into
dangerous areas if there are small rubber boats with dangerous
people and payloads on board. The short answer to it is there
is a need for maritime surveillance on board all classes of vessels.
Fire Scout is about a 1.8 tonne vehicle and will fit in a very
small box on the stern of most UK ships even down to offshore
patrol vessels.
Mr Brooks: There is one more point
I would add, sir, which I think warrants some thought, and I offer
this not as an answer but to generate perhaps some thought and
discussion for the future. That is, we are very used to the requirement
to maintain complete situational awareness of what is happening
in the airspace around our nations and our areas of interest.
We really would not think in this day and time of not having that
kind of capability. I believe that you will see in the future
that nations such as yours and ours will be seeking the same thing
in terms of protecting our sovereignty and of those areas we are
vitally interested in in ensuring we know what is happening on
the seas surrounding us. I believe that is one of the core reasons
why you will see many other nations start to express more and
more interest in this BAMS Global Hawk maritime surveillance because
it provides that capability.
Q238 Chairman: In view of the capability
that you describe, it seems astonishing that there are still many
problems along the Mexican border, that still pilots can go missing
in Nevada and not be found. Why is that?
Mr Brooks: I would tell you that
as a nation we are still coming to grips in terms of political
and policy decisions on the best way to maintain sovereignty,
to surveil where appropriate and to bring the right tools to bear.
The question is not whether the tools exist the question is the
most effective way to bring them to bear in both a network function
and a policy function in terms of civil liberties and so on. In
the case of our borders, there are some borders that are very
long and if we choose to surveil those it will require a capability
of both speed and sensing, so that you can visit and revisit in
appropriate times, and that means a high end type capability.
In terms of other borders, you may elect to use a more tactical
asset that allows you to maintain a full motion video on a key
crossing or key area, but we are still working through those policy
issues and how to bring them together in the network as a nation.
Q239 Chairman: You would say they
were more policy issues than technology?
Mr Brooks: The basic technologies
exist. The networks in terms of how to bring it together are still
being developed just as the policy issues are being addressed.
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