Non Blinking Eye

It is quite a sight to see a pilotless aircraft takeoff. The Triton sits on the taxiway, its engine idling as the flight test pilots and engineers sit unseen in two nearby enclosed shipping container-sized ground control stations running systemchecks. Meanwhile, a US Navy C-12 King Air gets airborne. The King Air will serve as the chaseplane for the mission, and it takes off ahead of the Triton to check for icing conditions on what is a fairly chilly winter morning.

With the all-clear from the King Air crew and all systems checks successfully completed, without ceremony or warning, the Triton lurches forward as a pilot in the ground control station releases the brakes and, followed by a safety car, begins its long taxi to one of Plant 42’s two runways.

Shortly, in the distance the Triton can be seen rolling down the runway and climbing quickly into the desert air as another test flight is successfully underway.

Soon the Triton is high above the historic Plant 42, which sits about 100km north of Los Angeles over the San Gabriel Mountains on the southern edge of the Mojave Desert, bound for the unrestricted airspace of nearby Edwards Air Force Base. Plant 42 seems a fitting home for the Triton’s early flight test program, as its various facilities have given birth to some of aviation’s most advanced aircraft programs, from Northrop Grumman’s B-2 Spirit to Lockheed’s SR-71 Blackbird to Rockwell’s Space Shuttle Orbiter.

The Triton (and Global Hawk), too, are built at Palmdale. While it is no spaceplane, Mach 3 spyplane or stealth bomber, the Triton-Global Hawk family is a pioneer in its own right as an unmanned surveillance platform that can stay aloft for 30 hours surveilling vast swathes of the earth’s surface from over 55,000ft.

Unlike the SR-71 and B-2, form certainly hasn’t followed function with the Triton. On the ground it looks ungainly thanks to its 39. 9m wingspan and its stumpy 14. 5m long fuselage, with its bulbous nose that encloses its satcom dish, underbellyradome for its ZPY-3 MFAS (Multi-Function Active Sensor) surveillance radar, its rear-mounted engine and uncommon V-tail design.

Instead, for the US Navy, Triton’s beauty will lie in its ability to provide “persistent” maritime surveillance, covering more than two million square miles in a single mission.

“The MQ-4C Triton’s ability to perform persistent ISR within a range of 2,000nm allows the P-8A aircraft to focus on their core missions, anti-surface ship warfare (ASuW)/weapons employment and multi-intelligence (INT) operations respectively,” the US Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) details.

The Navy has a requirement – program of record – for 68 Tritons and Northrop Grumman and NAVAIR are currently working towards an initial operating capability – IOC – for 2017. These next three years shape as critical for the program. While the Triton’s airframe can be characterised as a relatively low-risk development of the Global Hawk, strengthened for low-level flight and with an increased takeoff weight, the performance of its advanced sensors, systems and supporting software is central to achieving its revised 2017 IOC. That potential risk was highlighted by the Triton’s first flight being delayed 12 months from May 2012 as originally planned to May 2013 due to systems integration and software maturity issues.

A description in the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation’s annual report for fiscal year 2013 released in February underlines the complexity of the Triton’s systems: “The MQ-4C is equipped with the MFAS maritime surveillance radar to detect, identify, and track surface targets and produce high-resolution imagery. The MQ-4C electro-optical/infrared

Those next three years shape as critical for the program.

sensor provides full motion video and still imagery of surface targets. An electronic support measures system detects, identifies and geo-locates radar threat signals. An automatic identification system (AIS) receiver permits the detection, identification, geo-location, and tracking of cooperative vessels equipped with AIS transponders.

“Onboard line-of-sight and beyond line-of-sight datalink systems transmit sensor data from the air vehicle to ground control stations for dissemination to fleet tactical operation centres and intelligence exploitation sites. ” Even leaving aside the systems that allow the Triton to operate unmanned, it is clearly a complex surveillance system. Central to risk reduction efforts for the Triton program is flight testing the MFAS radar on a Gulfstream II testbed aircraft before it flies on a Triton. MFAS is an active electronic and mechanically scanned array radar that combines electronic scanning with mechanical rotation and is a particularly ambitious system given the amount of data it generates and processes in surveilling a 2,000nm swathe from 55,000ft.

Flight testing on the Gulfstream should result in a more mature MFAS system once it is installed on the Triton development aircraft, but on the high-flying Triton the MFAS will see more and process far more data, as the Gulfstream II has a 45,000ft service ceiling, significantly lower than Triton’s 55,000ft operating altitude.

“It gives us a great opportunity to get real insight into the system, to be able to make changes rapidly, and not have those kinds of problems when we put them on the jet,” said Mike Mackey, Northrop Grumman’s Triton program manager of using the Gulfstream testbed.

But to date, it has been the MQ‑4C’s airborne sense and avoid systemthat is proving most problematic. Triton would be the first UAV fitted with a radar to allow it to detect and subsequently avoid other aircraft in its flightpath, but the system has encountered “significant technical difficulties”, as described by the DOT&E report.

While development of a sense and avoid system has stalled, Triton flight testing has progressed smoothly. The first stage of flight testing out of Palmdale, which focused on envelope expansion and validation work, was completed in mid-March. Flight testing will soon move to NAS Patuxent River, Maryland on the US east coast.

“Following Triton’s first flight in May [2013], we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of test flights and test points being accomplished,” Captain James Hoke, Triton program manager with NAVAIR said. “We’re now working to fly the second test aircraft and then prepare to ferry both aircraft to Naval Air Station Patuxent River. ” Reportedly only one of the 568 test points for the initial air vehicle flight test program had to be repeated, an almost unheard-of achievement.

After the aircraft arrive at Pax River in the June timeframe, they will be fitted with their sensor suites before they commence work validating the capabilities of their comprehensive sensor suites.

“When we look at the testing that is ahead of us, the biggest risk is we will have another software load that we have to integrate into the system to be able to integrate the sensors onboard, and any time you do that in a development program you are going to learn things that you didn’t know before,” Capt Hoke told Australian media.

“As we transition flight test to Pax River in the [northern] summertime timeframe and load on the new software and

Only one of the 568 test points for the initial air vehicle flight test program had to be repeated.

start flying flight tests with the sensors onboard, that is inherently risky from a program execution perspective. Near-term that would be my biggest concern. ” Australia will be watching the next phase of flight testing very closely given Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s confirmation in March that the RAAF will acquire Triton, subject to the completion of the US Navy’s development program. Neither the number of aircraft expected to be acquired under the AIR 7000 Phase 1B project nor their planned introduction into service date were specified. These details will be considered by the government in 2016 based on the outcome of the forthcoming Defence White Paper process, the PM said at the time, but seven is thought to be the expected number of Tritons to complement the eight to 12 P-8A Poseidons being acquired under AIR 7000 Phase 2B.

Notes Capt Hoke: “The benefit of Triton is the altitude, the radar horizon and persistence and so the area you can cover with that non-blinking eye over a 24-hour mission just gives a lot more capability in the maritime search and surveillance domain than a manned platform would be able to give you. ” With that “non-blinking eye” it seems a sci-fi future is nearly upon us. A mockup of the Triton was displayed outside Defence’s Russell Offices in Canberra in early April. defence