The Air Force is asking Congress for $216 million in CY 2010 Overseas Contingency Operations funds to purchase 12 MQ-9 Reaper drones to replace Predators that have been lost in combat.
That seems like an awful lot of Predator/Reapers falling out of the sky for either mechanical or hostile fire reasons, and I’d be interested for DT readers to help track down the incidents if they’ve been reported. The loss rate brings up an interesting point about the entire idea of UAV use in highly sensitive strikes: better to lose 12 planes that cost about $12 million each (according to USAF budget materials, and that’s excluding support equipment) and are flown from a container outside Las Vegas than to lose almost a squadron of attack pilots and their planes in one year.
But I’m also worried about the idea that these downed MQ-9s are falling into enemy hands and could be reverse engineered for countermeasures, etc. We already heard of incidents where the bad guys are tapping into UAV comm links — God forbid they’re tinkering with the sensors and pinging the Norks or China on how to counteract them. Might be far fetched, but worth thinking about.
Here are the specs for the Reaper the USAF wants to buy:
The MQ-9 Reaper aircraft is a single-engine, turbo-prop remotely piloted aircraft designed to operate over-the-horizon at medium-to-high altitude for long endurance sorties. The aircraft is being designed primarily to prosecute critical emerging Time-Sensitive-Targets (TSTs) as a radar, EO/IR, and laser desginator-based attack asset with on-board hard-kill capability (hunter-killer) while performing Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Target Acquisition (ISR TA). In the hunter-killer role, the aircraft will employ fused multi-spectral sensors to automatically find, fix, and track ground targets (Automatic Target Cueing (ATC), Target Location Accuracy(TLA), Metric Sensor and other capabilities) and assess post-strike results.
Also, as if the JTAC/CCT community couldn’t get any more high speed, the Air Force is asking for $3.2 million to purchase 11 WASP micro air vehicles – those wicked little Aeorvironment throwable drones that peek over the next ridge. The Air Force says the drones will allow:
Battlefield Airmen to rapidly adapt to the dynamic war fighting environment of the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO). The system provides increased situational awareness in a combat environment, enables ground-based Battlefield Airmen to find and track time-critical targets, and provide bomb damage assessment and force protection for forward-deployed troops.
So cool…
– Christian
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
peek vs peak … your friendly proofreader
fixed…thanks "proofreader"…
Excuse me Dumas, but they really do ‘peek’ over the next ridge.
Those micro uavs look beast. That is interesting that so many drones got "disabled".
If this happened:
It is information warfare that war is going well :o!
It is a true that when demanding totalmorallawy action from leadMOB thoushand western scientist were executed as socialist onthe area 51 field. They were listed as militaryembloyees so nobody clould newer ask. Then MOB hit WTC and continued american sphyciatric treatment.
Its said that you cannot "lead"(as in boss) by morality and that is true..
I know one was crashed into a fence at Holloman during takeoff… road was closed super annoying….
While at first glance that seems like a large number of losses, I would really like to see the hours/air time vs. losses (mechanical/pilot or combat). This might give us a better insight into the probability of losses correlated to air time. It might not be that bad. I wonder how many NATO manned AC have been lost during the entire operation?
I'm involved with Pred B. I recently heard that the military saves about 3 M every time a Pred goes up instead of a manned AC.
I'd love to see the math used to justify that outrageous claim
That's the word from the military (heard by a Pred B tech) – ask them. There's a reason the military can't get enough of them. AF now buys more unmanned than manned AC.
Training of the pilot???Compensation for the pilot family???
I'd be interested to know if we've recovered those drones that have failed. I wonder how hard it is to repair them.
Id say there pretty much tanked. Though they dont go real fast compared to other aircraft they are built really light so they can have longer time on target and range.
Any machine that falls 10,000 feet to its death probably doesn't leave anything worth repairing.
There was one drone that went buggy, and headed for the hills (border).
"Air Force Shoots Down Runaway Drone Over Afghanistan".
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space…
"A drone pilot's nightmare came true when operators lost control of an armed MQ-9 Reaper flying a combat mission over Afghanistan on Sunday. That led a manned U.S. aircraft to shoot down the unresponsive drone before it flew beyond the edge of Afghanistan airspace."
Speaking of drones. SP has an article about a UH-60 drone… has anyone else heard about this?
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles…
There was one drone that went buggy and headed for the hills (border).
"Air Force Shoots Down Runaway Drone Over Afghanistan".
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space…
"A drone pilot's nightmare came true when operators lost control of an armed MQ-9 Reaper flying a combat mission over Afghanistan on Sunday. That led a manned U.S. aircraft to shoot down the unresponsive drone before it flew beyond the edge of Afghanistan airspace."
Speaking of drones. SP has an article about a UH-60 drone… has anyone else heard about this?
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles…
In the six months I was at Kandahar last year, four went down due to "pilot" error. Three were during takeoff / landing and one more entered "uncontrolled flight" (stall) due to crew (pilot / sensor operator) loss of SA.
Very, very few are being taken out by hostile fire.
install explosive so WASP drone wont get reused by enemy forces & send data in a flash burst to Hqs or any field CP nearby.
Once data sent, anyone who pickups WASP, gets a BOOM.,
I work at GA and can say that some of the air vehicles that are lost in-theatre (either iraq or afghan) are usually not just left there for the bad guys to come by and pick up the pieces. On a recent occassion where the data link was lost between the GCS and the MQ-9, it was flying around and was eventually shot down by a manned a/c. So even with 12 being lost, it's a lot less expensive than losing one of our manned a/c.
I found these interesting stats on strategypage.com…
http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/Predator…
The RQ-1 Predator had an accident rate of about 30 per 100,000 hours earlier this year. Now it's over 40. But air force statisticians point out that Predator, and other UAVs, are too new to have established reliable accident rate data. In another few years, that will be the case for the Predator, which is, by then, expected to have a loss rate of 25 per 100,000 hours, and eventually 15. Older model UAVs had much higher rates (up to 363 for the RQ-2A). But these high accident rates have come way down in the last decade. UAVs are expected to follow the experience of manned warplanes in this area.
For example, the new F-22 an accident rate is about 6 per 100,000 hours. F-15s and F-16s have an accident rate of 3-4 per 100,000 flight hours. India, using mostly Russian aircraft, has an accident rate of 6-7 per 100,000 hours flown (compared to 4-5 for all NATO air forces.) The Indian rate had been over ten for many years, and it is still that high, and often higher, with other nations (including Russia and China), that use Russian aircraft designs. The B-52 has the lowest accident rate of (less than 1.5 per 100,000 flying hours) of all American heavy bombers. The B-1s rate is 3.48. Compared to the supersonic B-1 and high-tech B-2, the B-52 is a flying truck. Thus the B-52, despite its age, was the cheapest, safest and most reliable way to deliver smart bombs.
New aircraft always have higher accident rates, which is how many hidden (from the design engineers and test pilots) flaws and technical problems are discovered. The F-22 is expected to eventually have an accident rate of 2-3 per 100,000 flight hours.
Combat aircraft are becoming more reliable, even as they become more complex. For example, in the early 1950s, the F-89 fighter had 383 accidents per 100,000 flying hours. A decade later, the rate was in the 20s for a new generation of aircraft. At the time, the F-4, which served into the 1990s, had a rate of under 5 per 100,000 hours.
Accident rents for RQ-1 above is incorrect. First, it is an MQ-1 . . . currently (and for the past 3 years) the mishap rate (not to be confused with the acraft loss rate, which is even lower) for Predators is 7.6 mishaps per 100K flight hours. Aircraft loss rate is in the 5 per 100K range. Never trust StrategyPage.
Rates . . . not rents – sorry
Did anyone else read this story and immediately think back to the report several months (years?) ago regarding the USAF's strict stance against autopilot landings on their UAVs? Don't remember the source, but it was a compare/contrast bit about the USAF's 1) only allowing pilots to fly drones and 2) not using autopilot landings versus the Army's 1) use of NCOs and officers (but not necessarily 'pilots') to fly and 2) use of autopilot on every landing? I seem to recall the stats being much in favor of the lesser-skilled operators using autopilot landings, and against the far-more-than-acceptable incidence of crashing by USAF drones on human-controlled landing. The protocols or statistics may have since changed – let's hope they have.
Hi,
Here is the ‘official’ report list
- FY 2009 (11)
http://usaf.aib.law.af.mil/indexFY09.html
- FY 2008 (8)
http://usaf.aib.law.af.mil/indexFY08.html
If a pilot goes down over enemy territory, you need to go on rescue mission.
You also have some stats here :
http://www.afsc.af.mil/organizations/aviation/aircraftstatistics/index.asp
Those include class A, B, Destroyed etc
I don't know how relevant this is by GA just signed a $266 million contract for Reapers and Predators. It was posted on 12/31.
Here's the blurb –
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc, Poway, Calif., was awarded a $266,055,622 contract for program management; urgent repairs and services; logistics support; configuration management; technical manual and software maintenance; engineering technical services; contract engineering technical specialists; contractor inventory control point and spares management; depot repair; flight; operations support; reliability/maintenance enhancements; and CAMS/REMIS/CEMS data collection entry for the Predator/Reaper MQ-1 and MQ-9 unmanned aircraft system program. At this time, $53,211,124.4 has been obligated. 703rd Aeronautical Systems Squadron, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8620-05-G-3028).
Good Morning Folks,
For any of you interested in more then just running off at the keyboard you might be interested in an article in the current Popular Mechanics, March 2010, by Joe Pappalardo, “Over the Horizon”. it starts in the year 2020 and shows what many in the USAF thinks the AF will look like then. This is not science fiction but what is appearing in professional journals of the AF currently.
After reading the article one item is conspicuously missing from the AF’s future the F-22. The F-35 mission is mostly as a controller for UAV’s. The article is somewhat take from a Tom Clancy novel but it make the point.
Lets see if this post gets by the censors, yesterdays didn’t.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
The AF needs to get with the program and equip all their Predators and Reapers with automatic takeoff and landing like the Army.
Good Evening who ever responded to my post,
The AF as well as the Navy are looking beyond the predator. The air described in the PM article was clearly a second generation after the X45. The AF envisions as much automation as possible for the air expeditionary wing. Returning aircraft would already have their diagnostics done while inflight and would enter an automated maintenance are, Much like a car wash, failing or defective parts would be swapped out by robots, software would be reset and finally a good washing and put aside till it’s next mission. More detailed or extended work would be done in a common area before going through the automated system.
Getting ready for a mission would be a similar process. Down an automated line, electronics switched out as needed by robots, the desire weapons put on and finally fueling the out to the flight line. Unlike today where a UAV has a ground crew of three a single airman/airwoman will be responsible for three UAV’s. Instead of flight crew of three (pilot, systems manager, and intelligence officer to OK targets) a flight of six UAV’s would have a single supervising pilot that could intervene if there was a problem.
It would appear that the AF envisions a group of UAV’s operation autonomously doing ISR. When a situation come up they would independently process data and field information and send that processed information down to command. The operative phrase here is that humans are on the loop NOT in the loop.
The UAV’s would be the agents in the decision making process, Humans would be able to pause it but would have no control short of termination. This would speed up the process and save band with by not transmitting all the data back to command and having them make the decisions. The strike would be planned and executed by the UAV’s. When a mission is planned by command an F-35 is sent up to work with the UAV’s, The F-35′s pilot role would be that of an ATC not as a combatant.
The Navy and Army are working on different Tactical uses and Command and Control of the air battle space.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
“better to lose 12 planes that cost about $12 million each … and are flown from a container outside Las Vegas than to lose almost a squadron of attack pilots and their planes in one year”
The question that comes to mind is how many losses there would have been if the missions were flown by manned planes. Pilot error would have dropped tremendously if the pilot was not sipping on a coke in a airconditinoned container halfway around the world.
Good Morning Folks,
The question posed regarding the loss of 12 planes vs. one piloted is of course a relative one but with the given information can’t be answered.
Questions of like: the cost of pilot and ground crew training, how many sorties and flight hours did those 12 RQ’s/MQ’s have, fuel consumption of the two platforms, how many of those missions could have been flown by a manned aircraft in respect to time duration of the missions, where they were and when the missions were flown, at what point in the mission did the accidents happen, take off and landing or over target, and finally what is the actual costs per air hour of the UAV vs. a manned A/F aircraft, of course included in this number should also be the cost of deprecation of the capital assets based and the necessary ground facilities of the expected life span of each air frame.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Air Force wasn't using autopilot landing/take-off and had much higher crash rate compared to army UAVs that were using autopilot landing/take-offs