The Air Force’s bid to take over all of the U.S. military’s flying drones has been shot down, Inside Defense says.
Over the years, the various branches of the military have all pursued their own independent, often overlapping, unmanned aerial (UAV) vehicle programs. The result is a giant, jumbled robot menagerie, with over a dozen species of military drones flying in Iraq. Few of them speak the same language, or work together well. Soldiers often have to wait weeks for a slice of the radio spectrum that they can use to talk to their UAVs.
That’s why panel after expert panel has recommended that someone take control of this unmanned zoo, and start getting the creatures to play together nicely. Last year, Air Force generals nominated themselves to be the zookeepers. They offered the Air Force up as the “Executive Agent” for UAVs — the financial and operational gatekeeper for all robots in the air.
In many ways, it was a logical choice. The flyboys already understand the skies, managing the “Air Tasking Orders” that tell American planes when and where to fly over a warzone. And they’ve long been the military’s gadget freaks. That’s why, back in the day, they got the bulk of the Pentagon’s space program, too.
But there was also a heaping scoop of self-interest in the Air Force move. The service’s fighter jocks have had a whole lot of free time on their hands, ever since the Cold War ended and all those Soviet MiGs stopped flying. And which service has been the most threatened by the rise of robo-pilots?
Plus, UAVs — especially the little, hand-thrown models — aren’t exactly planes. As I noted in last month’s Wired, “they have wings and fly, but they’re more like guns (or cameras) with wings than planes with guns.” And the last thing any Army or Marine general wants to do is give up his guns. Or kiss some fighter jock’s ass every time he needed to buy a few more flying cameras for his men.
So, in the end, it wasn’t a surprise that the Joint Requirements Oversight Council — the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the vice chiefs from each of the services — nixed the Executive Agent idea in a June 1 meeting.
Instead, Inside Defense reports, they endorsed the idea of turning the Air Force’s new UAV Center of Excellence near Las Vegas into an establishment for all four services. “That center will be led by a rotational flag officer, with the first leader being an Army one-star [general],” according to the newsletter. “The deputy, also a rotational position, will initially be filled by an Air Force colonel.”
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All 4 services should use thes live saving expensive drones! Without a argument that is a bad thing for the taxpayers in these times. Show the Tax payers what for positive life threatening situations the drones has done out there for our men out there in the war zone! A.Bauwens
GOOD! I’m glad to see that the pretty AF boys didn’t get their way and put a whole lot of MOSQ UAV pilots in the Army and Marines out of a job. THey need to work TOGETHER not fight for a piece of the pie and rule over it all like the AF jocks love to do. GO ARMY!!!
To give this type of weapon to the Air Force is like a combat soldier giving his rifle to a logistition. NO WAY! These are the type of weapon one needs in minutes, not hours. The AF can send in fighters it has on station, as can the Navy. You cann’t have a drone on station. It needs to be there, at BN level and up.
LTC® U.S. Army Reserve, ORD
I attended a lecture at the AASM in the 1980s where Gen. Chuck Yeager said that this day was comming… He could say that because he was “retired”.
I think the dividing line for Air Force control is going to be the data link. If the datalink needs to go above the armstrong line or needs to be bounced off of an Air Force asset, then it’s going to be an Air Force UAV.
It seems to me that this is just one indicator of big changes on the horizon. With our current combat environment it isn’t easy to make clear distinctions between the responsibility of the branches. Air Force members have been living in many more “real” combat environments, Army and Marine infantry are getting loaded up with high tech gear and old battle structures just don’t apply. I see an eventual merging of forces on the way. What it will look like and when it will happen, I wouldn’t begin to guess. But joint force bases are becoming the norm and staggered branch command structures like the one slatted for the UAV Center of Excellence seem to be pointing in that direction. I have heard the pattern coined as “The Purpling of the Military”. We’ll see how long it takes.
The decision to employ rotating command fits the ongoing attempt to use more joint command/joint ops. Maybe it’ll lead to the different branches playing together better. Let’s see how long this lasts.
Exactly until they claw each other to shreds in the next budget cycle.