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ISTAR 09
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 ft to 20,000 ft. 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, 7 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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(r) 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(r) 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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