I got an interesting response on my post last week about the Air Force’s 2010 OCO request for $216 million to buy 12 MQ-9 Reaper drones.
Air Force officials say the money is needed to replace lost or damaged Reapers from combat operations.
In my post, I noted that at least the intention was demonstrated in the request that the USAF would rather lose almost a squadron of MQ-9s in combat rather than one F-15 and its crew.
Well, my good friend and longtime Pentagon budget watchdog Winslow Wheeler pinged me with this rejoinder:
I think you are missing an important point in your comment about the 12 drone losses replacing aircraft/pilot losses. I strongly suspect drone accident rates per 1,000 flying hours are well above, multiples, of aircraft accident loss rates per 1,000 hours. As for hostile losses, drones are so ridiculously easy for any modern (I.e. non-Taliban) air defense to deal with that I suspect, if ever we meet same, they will be quickly attrited. Are there any drone losses to hostile fire in Afghanistan? If there is any such number, it compares to zero (I believe) for aircraft. Wheeler out.
Well, I did a little research on the first argument, and here’s what I found. Wheeler has a point in that the lifetime Class A ($1 million in damage or death) mishap rate for the Predator/Reaper — as of December 2009 — was “multiples” above that of, say, the F-15 fleet. It takes a little finessing, but combining the lifetime totals of flight hours for the RQ-1 Predator (which begins in 1997) and the MQ-9 Reaper (which starts in 2004), we get a Class A mishap rate of 10.2 per 1,000 flight hours. The Air Force says it lost a total of 57 Predators since 1997 and seven Reapers. Both aircraft have flown a total of nearly 655,000 flight hours.
Looking at the F-15 rate, USAF stats show over the lifetime (since 1972), the F-15 platform has a Class A mishap rate of 2.42, with 140 aircraft damaged. It’s lifetime destroyed rate is 2.04 with 118 aircraft lost — and that’s over a lifetime total of almost 6 million flight hours. But the stat that 43 pilots have died behind the stick of an F-15 and two of those were killed in fiscal 2009, speaks volumes to the family and loved ones of the fallen. Despite the high mishap rate of the MQ-9, no pilots are dead because of it.
But, yes, the Predator/Reaper mishap rate is more than five times that of the F-15.
Now on the shoot down issue, I just can’t weigh in. I’ll look into how many of those purported losses in 2009 were from shoot downs or malfunctions. But I don’t think it’s “ridiculously easy” to shoot down a Predator/Reaper. Small target, very high and relatively quiet when they’re up there…But I just don’t have any info on that yet.
All right folks, you’ve had your “cricket” dance with Murtha’s death, now it’s time to look back at his career.
I’d like our readers to list their top three most influential DEFENSE-RELATED things Murtha has done or championed in his more than three decades on The Hill.
Here are mine:
1.) Beating the Soviets: Murtha was a Scoop Jackson Democrat who championed the cause of freedom against communist aggressionand supported the Muj in Afghanistan against the Soviets. He was also in the tiny minority of Democrats who voted in favor of Ronald Reagan’s $100 billion million aid plan to the Contras in Nicaragua, so I give him huge credit for being consistent in his support of defeating the Soviets.
2.) Pushing the V-22 forward: Murtha — for legitimate programmatic reasons or for pure hometown pork — was a strong supporter of the V-22 Osprey program when the program was in its darkest days. The V-22 is a huge leap in technology for rotorcraft and will prove itself over the long run to be the way of the future for air assault and helicopter support operations. Murtha, whether he meant to be or not, was a visionary on this count.
3.) Changing the Army’s Camouflage Uniform: In one of his last, and perhaps most classically executed, moves Murtha bullied the Army into taken a very public relook at their disastrous Universal Camouflage Pattern. He slipped a line into the 2009 DoD Approps bill that forced the Army to evaluate their UCP pattern in Afghanistan, which had the effect of forcing the army to reconsider whether it should change their overall camo plans. This could be Murtha’s most enduring mark on the services.
Now look, my beloved readers, please let’s not use this as an opportunity to debate my selections. Let’s use this instead as a chance to help teach eachother more about what indelible marks Murtha has made on our defense establishment. I want to hear what you have to say.
Just now posting a story to Military.com on the death of one of the most influential defense lawmakers on Capitol Hill ever.
I’ve had my beefs with Rep. Jack Murtha in the past, but I truly am shocked and saddened by his death. He was a tireless advocate for Pentagon programs he believed in and forced them down a left-leaning Congress in years where defense spending was less than a priority. And despite our sometimes butting heads over the Haditha incident, he and his staff have always treated me with respect and professionalism.
We’ll slice and dice his record tomorrow, but today, let’s offer his family and staff our condolences and take a moment of silence to honor the decorated Vietnam vet and Marine officer/public servant.
I guess it was inevitable. The Air Force has its Leer Jet-sized drones flying circles around the globe, taking snap shots of Iranian nuke plants, Chinese sub pens and Haitian wreckage.
So what about the Navy, huh?
Well a tipster sent us an interesting story the other day about a DARPA project looking into producing unmanned frigates to locate and shadow enemy subs.
The three main objectives of the program are to build an “X-ship” that operates without anyone stepping aboard at any point in its operating cycle, secondly to demonstrate the technical viability of the system under “sparse remote supervisory control”, and thirdly to demonstrate the anti-submarine capability of the vessel and its “novel suite of sensors”. The ACTUV is unlike other unmanned vessels in that it is designed for global, independent deployment for months at a time.
First, let’s consider the source. It’s DARPA after all, so we can’t really expect that this will ever happen. But what DARPA is good at (other than providing fodder for the first person shooter video game community) is to spur thinking an innovation and way outside the box areas. With the Navy continually downsizing and building ships that require fewer crew, why not begin looking into the idea of larger ships with computerized crew?
I’m no expert on anti-submarine warfare, but it seems to me both doable and foolish. Computers are doing most of the undersea sound analysis anyway, why not have a computerized ship doing the dull work of detecting and tracking tangos like a Predator might do. I also recognize that there’s a huge amount of interpretation needed in the detection and analysis of undersea target (all of which could be done at a distance, for sure) but I’m also nervous about a totally unmanned ship navigating shipping lanes and other waters without a man on board to take the wheel when the seas get rough.
One thing I do know, it wouldn’t make for a very good remake of The Hunt for Red October.
Granted, this is the recommendation page, but to wholesale redact the entire thing is retarded. Also, notice the only thing left in is the praise for the medical training. So there was nothing else in there like that?
Look at page 9 which asks about intelligence indicators of an attack and synthesis of the info. All redacted…
But in the press release from ISAF, a partial answer is right there: intelligence assessments had become desensitized to reports of massing enemy formations by previous reports that had proved false. So why can that say that in a press release but redact it in the official report?
And this one is good too. Look at page 10 on the above section — what was the drone/ISR situation for COP Keating? Redacted. But the press release tells us: critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets which had been supporting COP Keating had been diverted to assist ongoing intense combat operations in other areas.
Hmmm, is the right hand trying to cover up something the left hand doesn’t know about?
We’re pinging them for a complete copy or executive summary, but the release accompanying the announcement says the complex attack by nearly 300 Taliban against the Soldiers of B Troop, 3rd Squadron, 61st Cav suffered from a lack of intelligence fusion, apathy and poor defenses.
The report determined that commanders must continue to assess the value and vulnerabilities of each COP throughout the rugged terrain of Afghanistan, and made several recommendations to improve coalition tactics. The investigation concluded that critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets which had been supporting COP Keating had been diverted to assist ongoing intense combat operations in other areas, that intelligence assessments had become desensitized to reports of massing enemy formations by previous reports that had proved false, and needed force protection improvements were not made because of the imminent closure of the outpost. These factors resulted in an attractive target for enemy fighters.
This seems to bolster Gates’ argument that we need more drones, but it also speaks to what our friend Andrew Lubin warned about complacency and lack of fighting spirit among some Army units in RC-East. The fact that the report indicates “intelligence assessments had become desensitized to reports of massing enemy formations by previous reports that had proved false” is truly scary. That’s full-on complacency — 100 percent — and reminds me of the makeshift signs I saw all around Camp Hurricane Point in Ramadi that said “Complacency Kills.”
We’ll try to dig into what happened to any of the officers and NCOs responsible for the troops during this incident, but the release says:
Based on the recommendations in the investigation, General Stanley A. McChrystal took appropriate action regarding Army personnel involved. General McChrystal also issued guidance to commanders and NCOs at all levels throughout both ISAF and USFOR-A to ensure the lessons learned from the investigation findings and recommendations were incorporated into current practices to prevent or mitigate future incidents.
Anyone have any gouge on this, please zap me a note on the Tip Line…no fingerprints…
UPDATE: Yes, I have been hammering ISAF for a copy of the investigation report into the ambush at Ganjgal. Last week (1/30) I received a note from ISAF PA that indicated a redacted executive summary of the investigation would be forwarded to me by today. So far, nothing. I’m still on it, folks…
This article first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.
A swath of Asia-Pacific states is in the throes of revamping their fighter inventories. As a result, Western and Russian manufacturers are either wrestling to sustain market share or vying with rival fighter builders in traditional client markets.
The fighter activity is but one element of broader defense procurement occurring across the region as militarily significant states recapitalize their inventories. Despite the impact of the global economic downturn, many markets are showing resilience. What’s more, while growth rates have flattened in many cases, actual decline has been avoided. There is budget pressure, but this factor has been less than in other markets, industry officials suggest.
All of the region’s top five military spenders either are introducing new fighter types into inventory or are in the midst of competitive procurement. Japan, South Korea and India are at varying stages of purchasing additional combat aircraft. Australia is introducing the Boeing F/A-18E/F into service — and is committing to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — while China is developing upgrades of both indigenous and Russian fighters, and also working on a twin-engine follow-on.
The Flanker family remains a key regional benchmark for fighter capability as the “threat” system against which potential purchases are to be measured. If the region grows more important for Western manufacturers seeking to bolster order books thinned from falling domestic production numbers (JSF aside), it is also critical to Moscow.
The latest, and possibly final, iteration of the Flanker, the Su-35S, is in no small part aimed at trying to sustain Russia’s position as a combat aircraft provider in the region. Two of its traditional clients , China and India, are developing their own combat aircraft manufacturing capacity; India is also potentially expanding procurement from the West. The Su-35S will likely be pitched as a replacement for earlier Flanker models in the inventories of India, but whether it is proposed to China remains in doubt.
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.
I’m sure I’ll get many a “what does this have to do with Defense Tech?” comments from the purists, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.
I rarely indulge in the Oscar back and forth, usually ignoring the whole spectacle as yet another chance for overindulged, undertalented phonies to reinforce eachother’s deep-seated lack of self-esteem by reminding themselves just how great they are — and making us all feel lucky that we can take a swipe at their self-licking icecream cone once a year.
(My favorite movie, maybe of all time, is Tropic Thunder…go figure)
Well, this year the best picture nominees include three films with gobs of defense tech, two of which I have reviewed for Military.com.
I’ll start with Avatar.
As you might remember, like everyone else, I loved the 3D effects, but bristled at the portrayal of human military force. The tech in there was mostly Aliens holdover gear, so that didn’t wow me either. After marinating in reviews since mine, I’ve gotten even more bitter about the whole experience, agreeing with critics who think what Cameron did just penned an allegory he thought was blatantly obvious about America’s image overseas. It was Hollywood at it’s most pedestrian.
Hurt Locker is another story entirely.
And I’m reluctant to let loose on this one as well, because I will say that I sat down with writer Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow in DC before I wrote my review. Mark couldn’t have been nicer, though you could see that the former feature/culture writer was taking right too his new Hollywood halo. But he was earnest and excited about his project and genuinely interested in my experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan with EOD units. Kathryn too was gracious, open and poised. My problem stems from their obvious lack of passion for the subject they put to film.
Mark, God bless him, spent about two weeks /with an EOD unit in Baghdad, spun the experience off into a Rolling Stone article, which popped in a Hollywood (where most people in the industry get their war news, I guess) casting around for a reason to show they weren’t ALL anti-war. The movie itself was a bit confusing and included some scenes that just flat out didn’t make sense at all (the sniper duel with the SAS/contractor head hunters?)…
I had already seen the movie when I spoke with Kathryn and Mark (be sure to re-read my REVIEW) so I asked them “if you were screening this movie to an EOD unit, what would you tell them it was about?” A softball, right? Anyone who went through the trouble to put together a movie on a particular subject should at least have some pat answers to questions like that. Long silence from Ms. Bigelow…Mark too, had some problems with the question. Which leads me to think their depth of passion for the subject they worked so hard to portray on film was shallow. It’s like a hardcore video gamer trying to get into the head of a SEAL. There’s no way.
So, in my opinion, those two shouldn’t have even made it to the Oscar process because they’re more reflective of Hollywood’s “we support the troops” guilt complex and antiBush-waronterror-protreehugger leftyism than any cinematic excellence. From a defense tech standpoint, it was great to see EOD guys get their day in the sun and some of the gear and TTPs were accurate — though I’ve never once even seen a full-on bomb suit in the AO.
Now for District 9.
Totally awesome. From both a technical standpoint and a cinematogrphy one, the movie was just amazing. Mean ass South African security contractors (they practically invented the modern soldier of fortune charicature), intersteller spacecraft that don’t get all FTL on us, a story that cut with a clean scalpel instead of a saw blade and casting that made us at once sympathic and uncomfortable (contrast the Distric 9’s off-putting “prawns” with Avatar’s elegant Na’vi). In terms of pure creativity, stellar acting and a gritty, realistic portrayal of an allegoric social conflict, District 9 hands down gets Defense Tech’s vote for best picture.
Our good friend Bob Cox who writes on the Fort Worth Star Telegram’s Sky Talk blog recognized the irony yesterday in the brutal flogging of the JSF program by SecDef Gates and yet another JSF test plane taking to the sky at virtually the same moment.
One day after being publicly chastised, if you will, by the secretary of defense for its lack of performance on the F-35 joint strike fighter, Lockheed Martin got its fifth F-35 test airplane in the air Tuesday for the first time.
First flight of the F-35B model (BF-3) short-takeoff and vertical landing jet had been held up for several days by the recent spate of cold, overcast weather.
I betcha MGEN Heinz wishes he could blame his troubles on the weather.
Read the rest of Bob’s post here. And all you JSF addicts, be sure to keep tabs on his blog…he’s like the Rainman of all things JSF.
This article first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.
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