Unmanned, at sea

Attendees at the Navy’s biennial Pacific series of maritime expositions at Sydney’s Darling Harbour may remember a scale model of an Armidale patrol boat on manufacturer Austal’s stand around the 2007 or 2009 timeframe depicting an Insitu ScanEagle catapult launcher and ‘skyhook’ recovery system. At the time Austal was reluctant to speak officially about the possibility of such a configuration, but quietly suggested there was much interest in the concept.

The Navy reportedly has been interested in fielding a maritime UAS for some time, especially from the forthcoming Hobart class air warfare destroyers and Canberra class LHDs, and the planned SEA 5000 future frigates. Based on a model currently being developed by the US Navy, there is certainly much promise in the concept of operating manned and unmanned air and water craft together in amphibious, boarding and counter piracy operations.

The US Navy has already successfully demonstrated the ScanEagle and is fielding the new RQ-21A Blackjack development from land and from ships, and has long been developing Northrop Grumman’s MQ-8B and the newer MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopters. Indeed, the main reason the Fire Scout program hasn’t received the funding it perhaps deserves is due to the US’s accelerated draw-down of its once large Perry class frigate fleet, and uncertainty over the future of the troubled littoral combat ship (LCS) program.

In its latest form based on the civil Bell 407, the Fire Scout has an endurance of over eight hours and can be configured with communications, optical, radar, EW/ESM and other sensor payloads to provide a surface combatant with levels of situational awareness once only possible via much larger and expensive to operate manned helicopters. Its communications system and sensors have been designed to be integrated with the combat systems of its mother ship and with manned helicopter such as the MH-60R Romeo Seahawk, and Fire Scout can also conduct lower level vertical replenishment missions between ships at sea or to ‘the beach’ if required.

Aircraft like Fire Scout have a much smaller physical and logistics footprint when compared to dedicated military manned aircraft. The Fire Scout’s dynamic components are directly lifted from the Bell 407,

The Navy reportedly has been interested in fielding a maritime UAS for some time.

thousands of which are in service worldwide, and the Fire Scout’s ground control segment can be brought aboard in a small container or integrated within the ship’s combat control centre.

In Europe, smaller scale vertical takeoff UASs such as Saab’s Skeldar V-200 are playing an increasingly important role in providing additional ISR capabilities to surface vessels. The 240kg Skeldar is powered by a 625cc 2-stroke engine, has six hours of endurance out to more than 100km, and can be equipped with payloads as diverse as daylight and thermal EO/IR turrets, synthetic aperture (SAR) and ground moving target indicator (GMTI) radar, datalinks, ESM packages, and AIS transponders. Skeldar’s commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sensors also have civil applications in support of firefighting, law enforcement, fisheries, environmental management, and other roles.

Thus, the opportunities presented by UASs in a maritime environment certainly appear limited only by the imagination of defence planners and their budgets.

Meanwhile, at the bigger end of the scale, the RAAF will be introducing the AIR 7000 Phase 1B Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton into service early next decade. While not ship-based, the Triton will have a primary maritime role in patrolling the vast ocean approaches and sparsely inhabited littorals mainly to Australia’s north and northwest, and will be a great adjunct to the US – and possibly Japanese and Korean – network of Tritons and Global Hawks in our wider region.

And after being mooted by Capability Development Group chief MAJGEN John Caligari last year, a new project, AIR 7100, for a medium altitude UAS, is also finally expected to be revealed in next year’s Defence Capability Plan to replace the interim IAI Heron with a more permanent middle tier solution between Triton and the small UASs with a Predator-sized platform. It’s likely the AIR 7100 requirement will comprise a maritime and/or littoral ISR capability of some kind and – based on recent comments from Chief of Air Force AIRMSHL Geoff Brown and his deputy AVM ‘Leo’ Davies, both of whom are confessed “fans” – could also result in Australia’s first armed UAS capability.