Drone Literate

Further down the track, the Army is examining emerging UAS capabilities, such as for field resupply and casualty evacuation and pseudo-satellites, a high altitude drone which provides substitute GPS, communication and data relay in event that the satellite capability is lost.

Then there’s armed systems. Under project AIR 7003, the RAAF will acquire either the General Atomics Predator or Israel Aerospace Industries Heron TP with troops on the ground the primary beneficiaries of the surveillance and strike capabilities.

There are other emerging armed UAS capabilities, such as the Israeli Rotem L, a five-kilogram quadcopter equipped with camera and datalink for surveillance, and, if the tactical situation requires, a pair of fragmentation grenades. The Australian Army is keeping an eye on such capabilities.

The Army’s UAS authority, Lieutenant Colonel Keirin Joyce, staff officer for unmanned aerial systems within the Army headquarters in Canberra, said Army was now well into the rollout of two outstanding tactical UAS.

Black Hornet is a tiny sparrow-sized helicopter able to peer over a compound wall, through a window or into a treeline. This is now halfway through delivery to the Army, with Special Operations Command and 7 Brigade fully equipped. The Army’s 1 and 3 Brigades are next.

That will eventually involve 160 systems across the service, each comprising three Black Hornets, a ground control station, chargers an extra range antennas, all packed in a Pelican trunk about the size of a laptop computer. For field use, Black Hornet travels in a small pouch.

“The soldiers love it,” Lt Col Joyce said.

He said this provides two game changing aspects, force protection and situational awareness.

“Now instead of sending a soldier down into an intersection, or over a hill or into a tree line to have the first look where it’s really dangerous, we can send a flying robot,” he said.

“You can send a soldier to have a look at something then wait for them to come back and give a verbal brief to the commander. Or you can fly this and the operator can stand next to their commander and say ‘is that what you wanted to see’.”

“You can do a 360 reconnaissance, you can fly right down to look at a car number plate. You can have a look into a window if you are about to assault a building.”

‘You can fly right down to look at a car number plate.’
LTCOL Keirin Joyce

“If this saves just one Australian soldiers from getting shot in an intersection or cresting a hill or going down a creek line or entering a building, that is a golden investment. We think it will save many many more soldiers than just one.”

Lt Col Joyce said these would certainly have been useful in Afghanistan.

“It is only the last couple of years that the technology has matured. The reason it is so mature is because the British army had the foresight and 5-6 years ago they made a very large order and sent it straight to Afghanistan,” he said.

Black Hornet was developed by Norwegian firm Prox Dynamics, now part of US company FLIR. Maximum radius is about two kilometres, though at that range, there’s only about five minutes on target. More realistic is 500 metres, giving 10-15 minutes on station.

The world’s best miniaturised technology is expensive. Program cost is $18 million for the 160 systems, plus training and logistics support for four years.

Black Hornet comes in two versions, one for day and one for night.

“Right now to get these systems down into such a small form factor, you have make it day or night. If we want day and night that’s when we go to the next one up which is Wasp,” Lt Col Joyce said.

The AeroVironment Wasp is a fixed wing 72-centimetre wingspan UAV which carries a single stabilised day/night camera, able to fly out to five kilometres and remain on station for 45 minutes.

Wasps are now in service in SOCOMD and 7 Brigade, with rollout to the rest of the Army to continue over the next three years.

When that rollout is complete, every combat team commander down to company level, whether in special forces, infantry or cavalry, will have use of a Wasp and three Black Hornet systems.

“We are really equipping those combat teams with the best technology in the world right now,” he said.

The Army is already equipped with one outstanding UAS, the US AAI RQ-7 Shadow 200, acquired in 2011 and deployed straight to Afghanistan where they flew 10,000 hours in support of Australian and coalition operations.

Lt Col Joyce said Shadow was a very reliable, very supportable awesome flying toolkit of options, carrying on every mission an electro-optic camera with cooled infra-red, laser range finder, laser designator, and a comms relay payload.

“It offers a lot of tactical flexibility to the commander. With 100 kilometre radius and nine hours of endurance it provides persistent surveillance options for the Brigade Commander,” he said.

‘It offers a lot of tactical flexibility to the commander.’
LTCOL Keirin Joyce

But Shadow is sizeable, with a six-metre wingspan, requiring a 400 foot runway, which provides some tactical constraints.

Lt Col Joyce said at the time, Shadow was the only mature tactical UAS available for purchase.

“It was a great partnership with the US Army. The US has 115 systems. We have two,” he said.

Each system comprises two ground control stations, enabling infrastructure and 4-5 aircraft. To deal with attrition, Australia bought a total of 18 aircraft.

As good as Shadow has proved to be, it’s getting old and is now halfway through life of type. As well, payload capability has vastly improved.
So Army has launched a new project LAND 129 Phase 3 to deliver a replacement for Shadow from 2022-23.

Recognising, the importance, the government has given the go-ahead for acquisition of three systems, allowing double the rate of effort.

Currently a single Shadow could fly 24/7 for 365 days a year over a single area of interest in a place like Afghanistan.

In practical terms, doubling the rate of effort would allow two aircraft to operate simultaneously, doubling the area of coverage in a brigade operational area measuring 150 kilometres by 150-kilometres. That goes some way to fulfilling the insatiable desire for intelligence and surveillance.

This project kicked off late last year and is now heading to Gate 1, with a range of studies under way to assess desired capability, ability to operate in non-military airspace, Australian industry involvement, facilities and just what’s available out there on the market. There’s a lot.

“Right now we are looking at everything that could replace Shadow. That includes everything from a 20-kilogram Scan Eagle all the way up to a US Navy developed Firescout Charlie. We have identified 16 candidate aeroplanes that could do the job,” he said.

That list could well include Scan Eagle, Scan Eagle 3, Integrator, Aerosonde, Arcturus Jump 20, L3 FBR-90, Resolute Eagle, Northrop Grumman Bat, Schiebel S-100, Saab Skeldar, Leonardo Hero, Firescout B, Firescout C, Shadow and Gray Eagle.

All are able to service a brigade area of operations, provide six or more hours endurance and carry multiple payloads.

Lt Col Joyce said that wide field of candidate systems needed to be narrowed down and one of the mechanisms was some experimentation, riding on Australian Navy trials with the Schiebel Camcopter S-100. That’s a 200-kilogram rotary wing UAV able to stay aloft for six hours.

Under the Navy contract, the Army is able to rent a Schiebel to conduct its own trials of a UAV which doesn’t need a runway.

And because S-100 is very widely used, many countries have already developed many different payloads.

“So we can also rent a range of advanced payloads to trial. We think the best 10-inch optics gimbal running now is the Wescam MX-10S,” he said.
“Right now on Exercise Hamel, we have our S-100 Troop flying our leased S-100s with a MX10 payload and we are learning all about it.

Lt Col Joyce says MX10 is about the same size as the Shadow gimbal which is more than 10 years old.

“This is a 2018 contemporary 10-inch package. We are learning about the technology change that we are already confronting and what 2018 era technology can do to our mission effectiveness and our employment concepts,” he said.

There are other possible payloads. The Defence Science and Technology group (DST) is looking at future hyper-spectral payloads, able to image across the electro-magnetic spectrum, not just visible light and infra-red bands.

Army is also looking at a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and also some off-the-shelf electronic warfare direction finding payloads, able to locate hostile emissions.

“We are in this game to learn quick lessons relatively cheaply to inform our follow on decisions,” Lt Col Joyce said.

So could the eventual capability involve a mix of rotary and fixed wing UAVs? Lt Col Joyce doesn’t think so.

“Army likes to keep things simple. Even though we are expanding the capability it is still a small slice of the Army and I think it would be a single aircraft,” he said.

That will like involve a short list and a contest, akin to that for the Army new combat reconnaissance vehicle under project LAND 400 Phase 2.
“I don’t think we will be able to down select to just one product. There will be multiple products that can meet the specification. Certainly the contemporary defence approach is to run a competition,” he said.

Whatever is chosen, it will need to be powered by a heavy fuel engine. The Navy draws the line at anything using volatile fuels aboard its amphibious ships.

Lt Col Joyce said with current and planned UAS, they believed they had a pretty good range of equipment for combat applications.
But what about all the other possible applications which might only emerge with some experimentation.

“This program is all about finding out what we don’t know about drones. How would a field warehouse use one, how would a transport squadron, how about military police, how would a forward armament and refuelling point,” he said.

“How could all these non-combat but still very important units out on the battlefield use drones?”

The answer is give everyone in the Army the opportunity to experiment, using readily available high end commercial quadcopters, specifically Chinese-made DJI Phantom 4 Pro Plus.

High end these may be but with a unit cost under $2000, they are a whole lot cheaper than dedicated military systems like Black Hornet.

The Army is buying around 300, so total procurement cost is very modest by military standards. If some are lost in the cause of useful experimentation, it won’t be the end of the world.

These will go to permanent and reserve units and even cadets.

“Over the next 12-24 months we can give them out. It only takes one day to train a soldier in how to use these. Let them experiment for two years and come back to us. The next time we do some major acquisition for military grade UAVs we will have a really good database of new uses,” he said.

“We are basically running a chatroom where all these soldiers can contribute. They can say we tried this and it worked or it didn’t work. People can share ideas.”

That opens the way for some interesting applications. One possibility is in disaster relief. In the wake of a major cyclone, whether in Australia, or somewhere in the region, two person Army teams could fan out across the affected area, using their small drones to conduct assessments of the damage.

That’s not something that could be asked of civil police of State Emergency Service members but it could of soldiers, trained to live and operate in austere conditions.

“The potential to get into drone operation is getting bigger and bigger. With the rollout of our quads, the entire Army is going to be – we call it drone literate. The Chief wants the Army to be drone literate.”

‘With the rollout of our quads, the entire Army is going to be drone literate.’
LTCOL Keirin Joyce

However, these inexpensive commercial drones come with a problem. Like many advanced consumer products, these are designed to provide feedback to the manufacturer, including data on where flown and even thumbnail images of what it has seen.

Would certain Chinese agencies be interested in data produced by Australian Defence Force operated drones flying around Australian defence facilities? You’d have to think they might.

However Lt Col Joyce said no data was sent back to the manufacturer if the devices never connected to the internet. They were configurable to ensue this never occurred.

As well, DST had conducted a full cyber vulnerability assessment.

“We are very confident that these are safe systems,” he said.

In the fast-moving drone world, some concepts which once seemed far-fetched are close to mainstream.

One is the resupply UAV. In Afghanistan a pair of US Marine Corps operated unmanned Kaman K-MAX helicopters delivered more than 2000 tonnes of cargo to remote bases. One crashed, apparently because of a wind shift, showing the technology wasn’t then perfect.

But these are getting better all the time, pushed on by companies such as Amazon and its plans for a swarm of small UAVs to deliver its products.
Lt Col Joyce said any supply mission conducted by a UAV would mean an expensive MRH-90 or Chinook helicopter and its crew were not at risk.
“We think there are cost and mission efficiencies in making that an unmanned platform. Once we explore the ethical and moral boundaries, if you are dropping off 150-kilograms of supplies, you have the capacity to lift out a wounded person,” he said.

“It is not the kind of capability that you would use for mundane administrative tasks. A truck is always going to be cheaper for the mundane. But for urgent requirements where you want to be able to get somebody somewhere very fast, you want to fly them and a casevac UAV is certainly something we are interested in.”

Lt Col Joyce said plenty of other nations, including the US, UK and Israel, were looking at this capability, though as yet none have fielded an operational resupply or casevac UAV.

“We are a little behind our allied friends but we are very much exploring the concept,” he said.

In event of a conflict involving major powers, each will try to deny the other their useful space enabling capabilities such as the US GPS, the Russian equivalent GLONASS and the Chinese BeiDou.

“One of the challenges in a future battlefield is RF denial. If somebody is blocking your access to satellites, then you want to be able to use a pseudo satellite navigation, surveillance, comms or data network,” Lt Col Joyce said.

One possibility is to use a special UAV which can circle high over the battlefield, providing the absent navigation, observation and communication capabilities.

Such an aircraft already exists in experimental form, the Airbus Zephyr, a 22.5 metre wingspan 53 kilogram solar powered UAV, able to fly as high as 70,000 feet with a five kilogram payload. This was originally developed by UK firm QinetiQ, with the system sold to Airbus in 2013.

Zephyr 7 holds the UAV endurance record, staying up for more than 336 hours in July 2010. Theoretically, Zephyr could remain aloft almost indefinitely.

Lt Col Joyce said DST was doing some work with Airbus on this capability.

“We are the service sponsor for that project. We have written the user statement that says we think that something like this could be used for maybe these missions. It’s about precision nav and timing, comms, data and imagery which would normally be provided by satellite but maybe we don’t have access to them,” he said.

“We think it has a part to play in the future battlefield.”

Airbus announced in June that Wyndham, Western Australia, would be its primary Zephyr flight test centre for its High Altitude Pseudo Satellites (HAPS) program, with trials starting in the second half of this year. Wyndham was chosen because of its reliable weather and unrestricted airspace.

The Army has experienced no problems at all recruiting all the UAV operators it needs to fill current billets.

“We have been full on our recruiting quotas to be a drone operator for the last three years. The potential is going to expand. We have the UAS Regiment in Brisbane that flies Shadow and they do it 365 days a year,” he said.

However, there will be a time when it will need many more – and it always needs those with technical skills – and where else to look for motivated skilled individuals than in the ranks of civilian drone enthusiasts.

To tap this resource, the Army has started a done racing outreach program based around the Australian Army Drone Racing Team whose members participate in regular competitions conducted under the umbrella of the Model Aeronautical Association of Australia (MAAA).

Lt Col Joyce said those who raced drones didn’t go to school or TAFE to learn how to build their drones.

“They watch YouTube videos. They do it at home,” he said.

“They don’t need a workshop, they buy in their parts, they teach themselves how to solder, how to code, they teach themselves mechanics, controls and datalinks and that the end of the weekend after they have shot some great video, they cut them into a video and turn themselves into multi-media technicians.”

Lt Col Joyce said all those skills were employable across a wide variety of Army trades.

“We want these people to see that drone racing is something they can do in the Army. We will even support them doing it,” he said.
“You don’t have to play rugby or cricket to be a sportsman in the Army,” he said.

“It’s not the Anzac Army any more. You don’t join the Army to march, shoot a rifle and ride a horse and maybe play some rugby. The modern Army is very different.”