The Future of Naval Aviation

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THE FUTURE OF

naval avIatIon

iS the LArge-deck AircrAft cArrier obSoLete?

Sen. Jim Webb: A need for ViSion And LeAderShip PAGE 2

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Adm. JonAthAn greenert: nAVY WiLL continUe to be forWArd And reAdY PAGE 2

AboUt thiS Section: this special supplement was prepared for the Advertising Custom Content department of The Washington Post by freelance journalist and editor Marcy Gessel in cooperation with the U.S. Navy and the 100th Anniversary of Naval Aviation Foundation. the production of this supplement did not involve the news or editorial departments of The Washington Post.

FISCAL CRISIS

Battle on to Secure the Future of Naval Aviation U.S. NAvY Photo bY MASS CoMMUNiCAtioN SPECiAliSt 3RD ClASS ANthoNY W. JohNSoN

of uncertainty, amid deep cuts in national defense expenditures.

A sagging economy and drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan have military planners trying to balance the desire to downsize with the need to keep up with rapid technology advancements in communications, weapons and air systems.

Meantime, the increasing deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles and the automation of aircraft carrier landings may change the very nature of what it means to be a naval aviator.

The Defense Department faces at least $450 billion in cuts over the next 10 years, and the amount could grow substantially depending on the final outcome of Congressional budget debates.

Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, Navy chief of naval operations, told the House Armed Services Committee on Nov. 2 that if acrossthe-board cuts were imposed on the services and programs, “We will be out of balance.”

Greenert noted that the Navy has provided one-third of the close air support for the war in Afghanistan. The Navy’s aircraft carriers and their air-and-sea strike forces provide power projection across the world.

In the coming decades, a few issues stand out as being keys in the progress of naval aviation: a) The Navy needs to determine how best to exploit the explosion in unmanned aerial vehicles and systems and adjust to the changes it will create in personnel, training and equipment needs; b) Similar rapid developments in technology for electronic warfare—both by the United States and its adversaries—will require investments in science and technology, while attention also needs to be paid to protecting the communications

systems needed to transfer data among units; c) Expansion in the use of rotary and vertical takeoff-and-landing aircraft continues and may affect the kinds of ships that will transport them.

“Right now, the future of naval aviation is mixed,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, research fellow for National Securities Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

At the same time the Navy has halted production on some of its new fighter jet platforms, the Navy and Marine Corps’ “fighter gap”—a deficit between the services' fighter aircraft inventories and their operational requirements—is real and growing, she said.

During a hearing in 2009, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) noted that the Navy could face a shortfall of “as many as 250 tactical fighters needed to outfit” 10 aircraft carrier air wings and 3 Marine Corps air wings in the next five years.

“A growing deficit this substantial will severely limit the aircraft available to combatant commanders on short notice. The outcome can't help but inhibit mission capability and the ability to undertake global operations,” Eaglen said.

The Navy faces different issues than some of the other services, noted Owen R. Coté Jr., associate director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It takes

the most plausible, high-end scenarios for the U.S. military are primarily naval and air engagements … in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it.

–As delivered by then-Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates at West Point, NY, February 25, 2011

longer to build a ship than a sensor, so when budgets are tight one tends to protect ship building” he said. “But there is a lot of really important stuff with sensors and networks that’s happening. The danger is that it would get left on the shelf.”

Eaglen noted that as part of the ongoing cuts, politicians halted production of the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor, meaning that DOD is building no fifth-generation alternative should the joint NavyMarine Corps-Air Force F-35 Joint Strike Fighter falter. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II faces its own threats to funding, particularly because of skyrocketing costs and production delays.

Traditionally, the Navy and other armed services have added new equipment onto old platforms, said retired Vice Admiral Robert F. Dunn, former deputy chief of naval operations for air warfare and current president of the Association for Naval Aviation.

Just as the Navy began its aircraft carrier fleet by converting colliers and then cruisers, building onto the proven systems operating today is the least expensive course to take, he said.

Thomas Hone, a retired Naval War College professor who has worked as a naval planner, agreed that starting with a reliable platform that can be updated provides the needed versatility. The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress has been in use since 1955 and the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit designed in the 1980s with the Cold War in mind, has shown real usefulness after being updated, he said.

The F-35 has run into problems because too many requirements have been added onto the basic platform, Hone suggested.

The single-engine stealth fighter will handle ground attack, reconnaissance and air defense missions and is being designed in a conventional take-off and landing variant, a vertical take-off and landing variant for the U.S. Marine Corps, and an aircraft carrier-based model.

The Marines are counting on the F35-B variant to replace its aging AV-8B Harriers and Boeing F/A-18 Hornets. The F35-B is the most complex of the three variants and is set to fly from amphibious

An F/A-18E Super Hornet launches from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) over the Pacific Ocean on Oct. 31, 2011.

U.S. NAvY Photo bY SENioR ChiEF MASS CoMMUNiCAtioN SPECiAliSt JoE KANE

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he Navy enters its second century of naval aviation at a time

A sailor crosses the flight deck in front of two Marine Corps CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters as the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHd 6) moves through heavy fog south of San Francisco.

ships. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates placed the F-35 on a two-year probation in January because of cost and performance problems, but Lockheed Martin reports a successful year of testing, including a safe vertical landing onto the USS Wasp dock on Oct. 3.

The Marine Commandant, General James F. Amos, told

the House Armed Services Committee on Nov. 2 that cuts beyond those already programmed would decrease forward presence and restrict the service’s ability to reset and refresh equipment pushed to its limits over the last decade of war.

But the most severe damage would be to tilt-rotor and VTOL technology, he said, because the

United States is the only place in the world building such aircraft, in the F-35B and MV-22 tilt-rotor.

“If those lines were closed, that becomes terminal,” he said. “That would be irreversible. You will not be able to gain that back.”

Coté, Hone and Eaglen all asserted that short-term budget fiScAL criSiS CONtiNUEd ON 2

UNMANNED TECHNOLOGY IN ITS INFANCY

This Century’s Naval Aviation Pioneers Flying Unmanned Aircraft

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n Oct. 9, 1903, the New York Times predicted, “The flying machine which might really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one to 10 million years.” Yet that very same day, two brothers who owned a bicycle shop in Ohio started assembling the very first airplane. And only six years from that date, Lt. George C. Sweet would climb into a plane built by those same brothers at College Park, Md., becoming the first U.S. Navy officer ever to take flight. One year after that, Eugene Ely flew off a wooden platform built on the bow of the USS Birmingham (CL 2) and the era of naval aviation was truly at hand, literally “one to 10 million years” earlier than the experts’ predictions.

We should keep this history in mind when trying to project where naval aviation is headed next, especially in the realm of “unmanned” or robotic systems.

In the blink of an eye, a technology that once seemed as science fiction as a “flying machine” is now rapidly being adopted into the force. In the last decade, the number of unmanned aerial

systems in the overall U.S. military inventory has gone from a mere handful to over 7,000 and growing. And, just like with those early aeroplanes, the naval side is an active part of this technological revolution.

Today, the new unmanned systems entering into the fleet run the gamut of size, shape and form. For instance, the role of

broad area maritime surveillance is being taken over by the RQ-4 Global Hawk. With a wingspan of 116 feet and an operational weight of over 22,000 pounds, it dwarfs the early planes that Sweet and Ely flew. Staying in the air over 24 hours, while carrying 3,000 pounds of electro-optical, infrared and synthetic aperture radar sensors, at heights of over 65,000 feet, the system provides persistent maritime intelligence, ISR data collection and dissemination at a global level.

While the RQ-4 operates from a land base, the Navy is also working to equip many of its ships at sea. On the surface fleet, these include smaller systems like the MQ-8 Fire Scout. Able to take off and land autonomously from any warship with a small deck, the little helicopter has deployed against drug runners in the Caribbean, pirates off Somalia, insurgents in Afghanistan, and recently helped targeting in the Libya operation.

It packs thermal imagers, radar, high-powered video cameras and a laser designator that can find and

fix targets to be taken out either by the mother ship’s weapons or rockets to be carried on the drone itself. With a range of over 200 miles, the robotic chopper is an unmanned echo of those early

the prototype stage right now are the Northrop Grumman X-47, Lockheed Martin RQ-170, General Atomics Sea Avenger, and Boeing Phantom Ray. Without a cockpit, and in some cases, even no tail

despite its relentless advancement, there are no signs that technology will end the central role of humans in war and at sea any time soon.

—P.W. Singer, author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

floatplanes, taking the eyes of a surface ship’s captain further than ever before, including inland.

The centerpiece of future plans for unmanned systems at sea may be the Navy’s unmanned, carrier-launched surveillance and strike (UCLASS) program. This type of robotic plane is specially designed to take on the ultimate of human pilot roles, the “Top Gun.” Some of the key contenders at

wings, such systems have been described as looking more like a set piece from the television program “Battlestar Galactica” than our traditional notions of a plane. But these same attributes give them capabilities well beyond even some of the latest manned strike fighters. Designed to be especially stealthy for the most dangerous roles, such as sneaking past enemy air defenses, the

prototypeshavelaunchedprecision guided missiles, been “passed off” between different remote human operators 900 miles away from each other and, in one war game, autonomously detected unexpected threats (missiles that “popped-up” seemingly out of nowhere), engaged and destroyed them and then did battle damage assessment on their own. They also promise to lighten the load on human operators. One human pilot remotely flew two UCASs at the same time.

The current U.S. Naval Aviation Master Plan includes provisions for the UCLASS systems to be flying off of carrier decks by 2018.

Whether they will be delegated to take on tasks on their own or paired with manned planes, for a package that is greater than the sum of its parts, is a crucial question of naval air combat doctrine moving forward. It is akin to the question early warplanes faced as to whether they were to be tethered to the existing surface UnmAnned technoLogY CONtiNUEd ON 12

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THE FUTURE OF Naval aviatioN SENATOR marks anniversary

100TH anniversary of naval aviaTion foundaTion

A Need for Vision and Leadership

Commemorating 100 Years of Naval Aviation

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rom its humble origins with the A-1 Triad in 1911 to today’s futuristic X-47B unmanned combat air system demonstrator, the history of U.S. naval aviation reflects a century of achievement in peace and war. Just three decades after the A-1 took to the skies, aircraft carriers emerged as the backbone of the modern fleet, a role that endures in today’s all nuclear-powered carrier force.

In addition to carrier aviation, Navy and Marine helicopters, vertical takeoff-and-landing aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles have expanded sea-based aviation with their ability to deploy on surface combatant and amphibious force ships. Fewer but increasingly more capable shore-based maritime air patrol squadrons perform critical fleet- and national-intelligence support missions.

Despite the heady accomplishments of 10 decades, all enabled by a proficient industrial base, naval aviation and the Navy’s fleet writ large face an uncertain future as Congress and the Department of Defense seek ways to reduce defense spending by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.

The Navy’s watchword now is “all options are on the table,” including a delay in the construction of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier or the cancellation of a new carrier acquisition outright.

As a maritime nation by virtue of geography, economic necessity, and global political commitments, we would be ill-advised to make additional reductions to our already greatly diminished naval force structure. Today’s Navy of 284 deployable battle force ships—our smallest fleet since 1916—is maintaining a high operational tempo, with more than 50 percent deployed from their homeports on any given day.

Today’s warships are exceptionally more capable than their predecessors, but greater numbers offer inherent advantages in their own right. As my Naval Academy classmate and former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jay Johnson was fond of saying, “Virtual presence is actual absence.”

The fleet’s undiminished operational commitments are cause for concern. The Navy is considering an extension of attack submarine deployments beyond their traditional six months because unified combatant commanders’ mission requirements have steadily increased. Aviation squadron and surface ship readiness continue their decline owing to under-resourced maintenance accounts.

Sailors in many ratings are spending more time on sea duty. The strain on them and their families is real. During the years ahead, we must not repeat the mistakes of the 1970s by placing unacceptably high burdens on their shoulders.

My very strong view, formed over more than 40 years, is that our national security and vital interests around the world affirm the statutory requirement for 11 operational aircraft carriers and the need for a Navy of more than 300 ships. Time and again in fardistant oceans, they have demonstrated their great versatility as strategic assets with highly potent tactical applications. The NavyMarine Corps team’s ability to sustain our distant alliances and to dissuade, deter, or defeat those who threaten us is enormously well-suited for our nation’s 21st -century strategic requirements.

As we withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, we should reassess how our nation will address post-9/11 realities and international terrorism in ways that do not entail a large and expensive overseas ground presence. We also must refocus our strategic priorities elsewhere, most notably in the vast reaches of the Pacific region.

We should reinvigorate our alliances with Japan and Korea, develop closer ties with the nations of Southeast Asia, and serve as a force for peace and stability in the face of China’s clear intention to expand its economic strength, military power, and territory.

The Navy has many important roles to play in this regard. With its mobility, flexibility, combined-arms strength, and relatively limited dependence on overseas bases, naval forces are well-postured to support our nation’s global national defense strategy and to execute their traditional mission of sustaining unfettered sea lines of communication.

During the height of our country’s worst economic crisis in 1933, we faced a similar challenge in deciding how to allocate limited resources for the nation’s defense. Spurred by an executive order by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, legislation sponsored by Congressman Carl Vinson and Senator Park Trammell ultimately led to a major eight-year naval building program totaling more than 100 ships. Their follow-on legislation expanded naval aviation acquisition programs during the late 1930s. Obsolete ships were replaced with designs that proved their worth for decades to follow—long-term strategic investments in national security.

Historians note that the landmark Vinson-Trammell Act helped to revive depressed U.S. industries and led to the long-term shipbuilding program that enabled the U.S. Navy to dominate the world’s oceans by 1945.

Similar vision and leadership are required today if we are to sustain that legacy for our maritime republic.

By Senator Jim weBB

Senator Jim Webb, a former Secretary of the Navy and combat Marine in Vietnam, is the senior Senator from Virginia and a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees.

his year we have witnessed an outpouring of recognition and appreciation for the historic role Naval Aviation has played over the past century for our country and in defense of our freedom. No nation in all of history has fielded a more potent and flexible military force than that represented by today's Naval Air Forces.

Perhaps the strongest evidence of the vital strategic role Naval Aviation plays in contemporary geopolitical considerations is the question posed in moments of crisis by every U.S. President since World War II: Where are our aircraft carriers?

The answer, of course, is that they are ready and they are located around the globe, anywhere they are needed at a moment’s notice, prepared to represent American interests, to defend, to strike, to suppress, and ultimately to defeat any opposing force on earth.

However there is more; while the essential mission of Naval Aviation is in defense of our nation and supporting our Naval Forces in keeping vital sea lanes open, the men and women who comprise this formidable force have also repeatedly answered the call to provide humanitarian assistance on the distant shores of islands and continents far from the American homeland.

Launching from the decks of ships ranging from aircraft carriers to cutters, and from forward land bases located at

the most remote places on earth, Navy, Marine and Coast Guard aviators flying fixed and rotary wing aircraft have repeatedly executed every imaginable mission asked of them. Enabled by the most advanced equipment American industry can produce and supported by the unfailing professionalism of their fellow servicemen, Naval Aviation represents the highest ideals of military service.

The chronicles of Naval Aviation are marked by significant contributions to our nation in war and peacetime. The future of Naval Aviation holds the promise of an even greater impact on our world. While the future mission for Naval Aviation is unchanged, the battlefield may very well be different. From space warfare, unmanned aerial vehicles and stealth aircraft to cyber warfare and terrorism, tomorrow’s Naval Aviators will be prepared to meet and prevail over these challenges just as they have done for the past 100 years.

On December 1, 2011, we will commemorate the conclusion of a year-long recognition of the

Centennial of Naval Aviation, its accomplishments over the past century and a look into its promising future. Please join us for the public Centennial of Naval Aviation Wreath Laying Ceremony, 1 p.m., at the U.S. Navy Memorial, and the Official Centennial of Naval Aviation Commemorative Gala, at the National Building Museum that evening.

The Board of Directors of the 100th Anniversary of Naval Aviation Foundation extends its sincere appreciation to the generous Sponsors of the Centennial, our Honorary Committee Members, and the many civilian, active and retired military volunteers for their tireless efforts to coordinate this celebration. Most importantly we recognize the members of the Naval Aviation family who have left an indelible mark on our Nation over the past 100 years.

Our Board is deeply proud of the contribution of Naval Aviation to our Nation, and we are humbled to have served in recognition of the United States Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard’s service to America.

United States Navy

The Board Co-Chairman

Major General Bob Butcher, USMC (Ret) Co-Chairman

Rear Admiral John “Mac” McLaughlin, USN (Ret) President

Captain Jim DiMatteo, USN executive director

Katie Everhart Members

Willis M. Allen, Jr. Jason Brustkern Reo Carr Patrick Connors Shelly Hall John Hawkins Phillip L. Jelsma Mary King Scott Mednick Mitch Mulanix Ari Petersen Patti Roscoe Larry Scott

CHief of naval oPeraTions

Navy Will Continue to Be Forward and Ready

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ver the last 100 years, the courage, innovation and accomplishment of naval aviation has been something to be proud of. During its first century, naval aviation has grown from a niche capability to a primary instrument of national security.

This year we honor that proud legacy and recognize the ongoing contributions of naval aviation to America's security and prosperity. From biplanes to jets, naval aviation has been at the forefront of change and technology, extending America’s area of influence from under the sea into the outer limits of space.

Today, our Sailors and Marines with their complement of helicopters, strike-fighters, patrol aircraft and ships are forward, ready, and focused on warfighting. In Afghanistan, naval aircraft supply about one-third of the close air support missions.

As we turn our attention to naval aviation’s future, it is important that we remain focused on winning today while building

a capable and relevant force.

Our Sailors and Civilians are the foundation of our warfighting capability. Our people will be more diverse in experience, background and ideas; personally and professionally ready; and proficient in the operation of their weapons and systems.

The aircraft in the next decades predominantly will be the proven platformsoftoday,butwithgreater reach and persistence thanks to new payloads of sensors, weapons, electronic warfare systems and unmanned vehicles.

The unmanned systems in the air and water will employ greater autonomy and be fully integrated with their manned counterparts.

Additionally, the future fleet will maintain our current advantages

in the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace, but will fully operationalizethemaswarfighting domains.

While the attributor of our naval aviation will change over the coming decades, our contribution to the nation’s defense will not.

Being forward with our people, aircraft and ships we will remain as essential as we are today.

Operating forward we will deter aggression, promptly respond to crisis, and win our nation’s wars. We will operate globally at the front line of our nation’s efforts in war and peace, and the fleet will continue protecting the interconnected systems of trade, information, and security that underpin our own economy and that of our friends and allies.

We will continue to operate with international partners to protect the “maritime crossroads” where shipping lanes, resources flows and information intersect, such as the Straits of Gibraltar, Hormuz, and Malacca. These areas are extremely important to the economic prosperity of our nation, as well as our friends and allies.

We have a mandate to recruit and train the most qualified and

capable Sailors. Our Navy will continue to be made up of the most sophisticated, professional, and disciplined Sailors in the history of our great nation. The knowledge, high standards and productivity that are required of them, in some of the most challenging environments, prove how truly exceptional our people are. So, as we share a storied history during this Centennial of Naval Aviation I am confident that the spirit and passion of our past will live on for many decades.

Go Navy!

By admiral Jonathan w. Greenert

Chief of Naval Operations

Commander of naval air forCes

Naval Aviation Continues to Make History

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uring this centennial year of naval aviation, seven of our aircraft carriers have been deployed, from USS Enterprise (CVN 65), which celebrates 50 years of service this year, to our newest carrier on her maiden deployment, USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). Our carriers with their air wings provided more than a third of the close air support for our service members and coalition partners on the ground in Afghanistan. They have countered piracy and provided reliable presence to support our Allies and influence regional actors, and made history for their contributions in fighting global terrorism, especially USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70).

They have also been a force for good providing relief and humanitarian assistance, as did USSRonaldReagan(CVN76)earlier this year to our friends in Japan through Operation Tomadachi.

While we have honored our legacy during this anniversary

year, we also look to the future. We remain focused on warfighting, ready always to operate forward, and we will maintain this focus as we prepare to implement our planned transitions, including the MH-60R/S, P-8 Poseidon,

EA-18 Growler, E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, Joint Strike Fighter and the Ford-class aircraft carrier now under construction with the new electro-magnetic aircraft launch system and advanced arresting gear.

What will remain constant, though, is our shared passion

for flight and the innovation and courage that is the heart of naval aviation. We have forged a legacy of success that will continue to guide us into the future.

designed after the late ’60s," Coté said. “There’s a whole generation of air defense systems that we would face in a war against China and not anywhere else. If you look at what we have faced, it’s been the JV team.”

The answer, Coté said, is to adapt submarines, ships and aircraft carriers to new missions rather than abandon them.

Yet one area some analysts have targeted for cuts is the large-deck aircraft carrier. With the increasing importance of rotary aircraft and vertical takeoff and landing aircraft such as the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, the argument goes, the Navy could transport its air fleet on smaller ships.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said, “Once you don’t have to spend all of your time landing the airplane, it has the

potential to change everything.”

Aside from the $12.5 billion cost of a carrier itself (the estimated cost of the USS Gerald R. Ford planned for 2015), supercarriers require a larger number of staff, providing support for the aircraft and for the people who maintain and fly the aircraft, Pike said.

“People focus on carriers. I don’t think you should look at a carrier and say just because it can’t go anywhere it wants to go on the first day of the war that it’s obsolete,” Coté said.

Though carriers and their strike groups remain crucial for power projection, it probably would not hurt to reduce the number in the fleet to 10 from the current 11, he added.

Hone noted that overall Navy personnel needs to be one of the targets for cuts. “People are expensive,” he said. “You have

to train them and keep them and reward them for the dangerous and important work they do. That costs money.”

The most critical area in personnel, he said, is healthcare spending. Just as it is for civilians, healthcare is a major expense that is difficult to control. Unlike for civilians, though, the military makes a promise to its people that if they serve, their healthcare needs will be met, Hone said.

“It’s not going to be easy. I think it’s going to be wrenching,” Hone said.

Coté said he’s optimistic that even if the Navy must shelve some ideas temporarily, it has the capacity to come back.

“I think we are going to be under a lot of financial pressure for a long time,” Coté said, “but when we get genuinely scared, we will react.” 

By ViCe admiral allen G. meyerS

Commander of Naval Air Forces

FISCaL CoNtiNUed from 1

savings could cause long-term harm if investments do not continue in research units such as the Naval Research Laboratory.

Hone, whose book Battle Line details the subject, pointed out that even during the Great Depression, the Navy pumped money into the NRL and the Director of Naval Research. This investment helped a navy demobilized after World War I to win the Pacific War during World War II. Added to the difficulty of planning for the future is the knowledge that it most likely will look different from the recent past. Coté noted that with the rise of China as a potential military adversary, the Navy will face challenges it hasn’t faced since the end of the Cold War. “If you think about the wars that we fought (in recent years), we never faced air defense systems

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THE FUTURE OF Naval aviatioN The Future of Naval Aircraft

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lthough the Navy regularly updates its existing platforms, eventually aircraft must be replaced with new technology.

This page highlights aircraft newly in production or now in development.

Naval aviatioN aircraft iNformatioN from upcomiNg Naval aviatioN visioN ~ JaNuary 2012.

SketcheS by keN colliNS (omNitec SolutioNS, iNc.).

U.s. Navy photo by Mass CoMMUNiCatioN speCialist 1st Class MiChelle lUCht

 p-8a poSEiDon

The P-8A Poseidon will replace the P-3C Orion, which has reached the end of its service life. The Poseidon will provide broad area maritime and littoral anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare as well as armed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to joint warfighters. To keep pace with emerging threats, the P-8A features a sensor and communications suite built within an open architecture to facilitate the insertion of state-of-the-art anti-submarine warfare sensors, net-ready technologies, and the latest joint weapons throughout its service life. The procurement plan for the Poseidon provides for a force with the lethality and capacity needed to support strike groups and the joint battle force in any maritime environment.

Initial operational capability for the P-8A Poseidon is 2013.

The Joint Strike Fighter program is building a tri-service family of next-generation, strike-fighter aircraft that is flexible and survivable. With its all-aspect stealth strike design, internal weapon carriage, fully fused mission systems, and unrefueled combat radius of greater than 600 nautical miles, the Navy’s F-35C Lightning II will complement the capabilities of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet now serving as the Navy’s premier strike fighter. The F-35C will enhance the flexibility, power projection, and strike capabilities of carrier air wings and joint task forces.

The E-2C Hawkeye provides all-weather airborne early warning, airborne battle management, and command-and-control functions for strike group and joint force commanders. An integral component of carrier air wings, the E-2C uses its radar, identification friend or foe, electronic surveillance sensors, and offboard data sources to provide early warning threat analysis against potentially hostile air, surface, and ground targets. E-2C/D usage of Link-11, Link-16, Cooperative Engagement Capability, and a communication suite connects carrier air wings and strike groups at the tactical level to the operational level of warfare. The E-2D Advanced Hawkeye will replace the current E-2C aircraft beginning in 2014, with the final squadron transition scheduled for 2022. The E-2D’s electronically scanned array radar will provide enhanced capabilities in the overland and littoral environments, while significantly improving performance against clutter and small targets and providing integrated air and missile defense capabilities. The E-2D is currently undergoing flight testing and has been approved for all four years of low-rate initial production. Initial operational capability for the aircraft will be October 2014.

F-35B F-35B

F/a-18E/F F/A-18E/F

photo CoUrtesy Northrop GrUMMaN

 F-35C Lightning ii

F-35C F-35C

 E-2C hawkEyE / E-2D aDvanCED hawkEyE

The Marine Corps’s AV-8B Harrier, EA-6B Prowler, and F/A-18A/C/D Hornet aircraft will be replaced with the F-35 Lightning II B and C models. The Lightning II combines multirole, low-observable, fifth-generation capabilities with the flexibility required for expeditionary basing. The F-35 will allow the Marine Corps to provide a wide range of air operational options and tactical supremacy to task force commanders.

U.s. Navy photo CoUrtesy of loCkheed MartiN by MiChael d JaCksoN

U.s. Navy photo CoUrtesy loCkheed MartiN

 F-35B/C Lightning ii

p-8a

Ea-18g EA-18G

E-2D E-2D

 Ea-18g gRowLER / Ea-18g REpLaCEMEnt

U.s. Navy photo by petty offiCer 2Nd Class daNiel barker

The EA-6B Prowler has long served as the nation’s foremost tactical airborne electronic attack platform. In December 2001, the Navy completed an analysis of alternatives for electronic attack, laying the foundation for the replacement of the Prowler with the EA-18G Growler. The Growler leveraged the investments made in the ALQ-218 receiver system, which is the heart of the EA-6B Improved Capability III program. The next step is to replace the ALQ-99 Tactical Jamming System with the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ), with an initial operational capability anticipated in 2020. Development of NGJ is critical to the Navy’s vision for the future of airborne electronic attack and is a vital component of the Defense Department’s plan to build a joint system-of-systems electronic attack capability. The EA-18G is already in service, and saw its first combat sorties in Libya.

Full operational capability is scheduled for 2015. By 2032, the EA-18G Replacement aircraft will have begun replacing the EA-18G Growler.

 Mv-22B oSpREy

The MV-22B Osprey is a tiltrotor vertical/short takeoff and landing aircraft designed as the medium-lift replacement for the Vietnamera CH-46E Sea Knight assault support helicopter. The Osprey can operate as a helicopter or as a turboprop aircraft and incorporates advances in composite materials, airfoil design, fly-by-wire controls, and digital avionics. It has twice the speed, six times the range, and three times the payload of the aircraft it replaces. In February 2011 the V-22 program surpassed 100,000 flight hours and has successfully deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan and aboard U.S. naval shipping. It currently supports combat operations in the Central Command area of responsibility.

Uh-1y UH-1Y

Mv-22B

MV-22B

Mh-60R MH-60R

Mh-60S MH-60S

 Mh-60R / Mh-60R REpLaCEMEnt

The MH-60R provides surface and subsurface warfare support with its airborne low-frequency sonar, inverse synthetic aperture radar with automatic periscope detection and discrimination modes, electronic support measures, an advanced forward-looking infrared system, precision air-to-ground missiles, machine guns, and lightweight torpedoes. The MH-60R is the only organic airborne anti-submarine warfare asset within strike groups and is critical to ensuring maritime dominance.

 Mh-60S / Mh-60S REpLaCEMEnt

The MH-60S multimission helicopter is currently conducting search-and-rescue, combat search-and-rescue, special operations forces support, air ambulance, anti-piracy, combat support, and fleet logistics operations. (Through the 2020s, the HH-60H will also provide special operations forces support in addition to the MH-60S.) Its utility has been critical to successful humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts since the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Using the forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor, Link-16, and an array of current and programmed air-toground weaponry as well as crew-served weapons, the MH-60S operates independently or as part of a “hunter/killer” team with the MH-60R for anti-surface warfare missions. In addition, the platform provides critical airborne mine countermeasures as part of the littoral combat ship mine countermeasures mission package. Using one of four advanced sensor and weapon packages to provide detection, localization, and neutralization of anti-access mine threats, these systems allow naval forces to operate and maneuver in littoral and blue-water environments.

U.s. Navy photo by Mass CoMMUNiCatioN speCialist seaMaN deveN b. kiNG

U.s. Navy photo by Clark pierCe

There are a number of enhancements to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet that will sustain its lethality well into the 21st century.

Upgrades include critical growth capability, enhanced survivability, and weapon bring-back improvement. Avionics upgrades for the F/A18E/F Block II include the APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array Radar System, the Infrared Search and Track System, and advanced sensor integration. Future avionics upgrades will enable networkcentric operations, which will enhance situational awareness and the transfer of data to command-and-control nodes. The Super Hornet also fills the critical organic tanking mission for carrier air wings, extending the operational reach of the nation’s sea power.

Naval Aviation continues to study the capabilities required when the F/A-18E/F reaches the limits of its service life beginning in 2025. The assessment is the initial stage of the requirements and acquisition process; it will evaluate a full range of considerations for addressing future Navy needs and recapitalization issues, including manned, unmanned, and system-of-systems options. The capabilities assessed during the study will be further developed and refined through operational analytical modeling and simulation, potentially leading to an analysis of alternatives and, eventually, a competitive fly-off between various industry proposals for the F/A18E/F Replacement.

ah-1Z AH-1Z

U.s. Navy photo by Mass CoMMUNiCatioN speCialist 3rd Class doMiNiqUe piNeiro

 F/a-18E/F SUpER hoRnEt / F/a-18E/F REpLaCEMEnt

Having achieved full-rate production and initial operational capability for both the UH-1Y and the AH-1Z, focus for the H-1 upgrade program has shifted toward fielding and sustaining these capable airframes. H-1 upgrade aircraft are equipped with a four-bladed rotor system, 10,000-hour airframes, integrated avionics, glass cockpits, significantly improved sensors, and helmet-mounted displays, and have vastly increased payload, range, and time-on-station. The UH1Y has supported combat operations in Operation Enduring Freedom since October 2009, and the AH-1Z deployed for the first time in November 2011 alongside the UH-1Y as part of an “all upgrades” MEU. The AH-1Z/UH-1Y combined deployment showcased the advantages of sharing 84 percent of components, significantly increasing maintainability while reducing the logistics footprint and associated training requirements.

U.s. Navy photo by Mass CoMMUNiCatioN 3rd Class JaMes tUrNer

U.s Navy photo by Mass CoMMUNiCatioN speCialist 2Nd Class JaMes r. evaNs

 ah-1Z vipER anD Uh-1y vEnoM

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THE FUTURE OF Naval aviatioN Deploy Smaller veSSelS

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ith smaller and lighter unmanned aircraft coming into the mix, the United States can also deploy smaller and lighter—and less expensive—ships to carry them. We can’t know for sure how future adversaries will challenge our Fleet, but we can assess with some certainty how technology is affecting their principal capabilities.

Judging from the evidence, future Fleet actions will place a premium on early sensing, precision targeting, and longrange ballistic- and cruisemissile munitions. Increasingly sophisticated over-the-horizon and space-based sensors, in particular, will focus on radar signature control and signature deception.

Thus, we must ask ourselves how best to win this battle of signatures and long-range strike.

In the current Fleet, submarines are the gold standard for signature control. But unless they receive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) from other sources, they have limited sensing ranges. While surface combatants have longer-range sensing capabilities in multiple domains, they pay for it with a significantly higher signature.

Given clear technology trends toward precision long-range strike and increasingly sophisticated anti-access and area-denial capabilities, high-signature, limitedrange combatants like the current aircraft carrier will not meet the requirements of tomorrow’s Fleet. The march of technology is bringing the supercarrier era to an end, just as the new long-

range strike capabilities of carrier aviation brought on the demise of the battleship era in the 1940s.

The Carrier Dilemma Factors both internal and external hasten the carrier’s curtain call.

Competitors abroad have focused their attention on the United States’ ability to go anywhere on the global maritime commons and strike targets ashore with pinpoint accuracy. That focus has resulted in the development of sensors and weapons that combine range and strike profiles to deny carrier strike groups the access necessary to launch squadrons of aircraft against shore installations.

In addition, a series of poor acquisition decisions, beginning with the mismanagement and ultimate cancellation of the A-12 Avenger as the replacement aircraft for the A-6 Intruder deepstrike aircraft, have exacerbated the challenge to carrier efficacy.

The resulting reduction in the combat-effective range of the carrier air wing from 1,050 to 500 nautical miles forces the carrier to operate closer to enemy shores even as anti-access systems would logically force the carrier farther seaward.

Accompanying this range deficiency has been the dramatic increase in the cost of the carrier and air wing. The price tag for the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) was $950 million, or 4.5 percent of the Navy’s $21 billion budget in 1976. The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), lead ship of a new class of supercarriers, is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost $12.5 billion. Add to that the Navy’s own estimate of a 60 percent chance the ship will exceed the original cost projection and the number of technologies still under development. This brings the estimate to around $13.5 billion, or 8.7 percent of a $156 billion budget—all this while the ship is still plagued with technical risk factors like electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) and multifunction radar. The Gerald R. Ford is just the first of her class. She should also be the last.

New Paradigm, New Fleet Change is essential, but Fleets don’t just change overnight. As always, the true pacing factors are the financial and industrial capacities of a nation. Current anti-access systems suggest that

submarines will dominate the future Fleet. But the relative lack of maturity in implementing those technologies into a comprehensive battle network means that we have time to make deliberate and strategic course corrections to a lower signature and a longerrange striking Fleet. That would feature not only subs, but also unmanned systems in the air, on the surface, and below the waves, thus establishing a new paradigm for Fleet design.

In such a new strategic environment, unmanned systems diminish the utility of the supercarrier, because the seacontrol and power-projection missions can be performed more efficiently and effectively by other means. When the carrier superseded the battleship, the latter still retained great utility for naval surface fire support. Similarly, today’s carrier will be replaced by a network of unmanned platforms, while still retaining utility as an asneeded strike platform. Even if we purchased no new supercarriers, we would still have operational carriers in the Fleet for more than 50 years.

In the meantime, the Americaclass big-deck amphibious ship could become a new generation of light aircraft carrier. At 45,000 tons’ displacement, she will slide into the water larger than her World War II predecessors, and larger even than the modern French aircraft carrier Charles

U.S. Navy photo by MaSS CoMMUNiCatioN SpeCialiSt 3rd ClaSS ChriStopher K. hwaNg

Twilight of the $UPERfluous Carrier

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) pulls out of Busan, Republic of Korea, after a port visit.

de Gaulle. Designed without an amphibious well-deck, she will put to sea with a Marine Air Combat Element and key elements of a Marine Expeditionary Unit.

However, to view this purely as an amphibious-assault ship would be to miss the potential as a strike platform. Stripped of rotorcraft, the America class could comfortably hold two squadrons of F-35B short take-off vertical-landing (STOVL) stealth fighter/attack aircraft.

Such an arrangement would allow the naval services to increase presence and strike potential throughout the maritime domain.

In addition, if the requirements were instituted in the near term, the new unmanned carrierlaunched airborne-surveillance and strike (UCLASS) aircraft could be designed to operate from Americaclass decks with greater potential

utility and distribution than what could be expected when operating from supercarriers.

Beneath the Surface Cruise-missile-equipped fastattack submarines and largesalvo guided-missile submarines would become the natural complements to the UCLASS. Launched from stealthy platforms lying hidden beneath the waves, cruise and conventionally armed ballistic missiles would speed toward critical command, control, communications, and computer ISR nodes ahead of manned and unmanned strike aircraft, crippling an enemy’s ability to defend itself.

Such platforms would have a deterrent effect, promising quickreaction strikes from unknown and DEPLOY CoNTiNUEd oN 11

The Supercarrier is NOT Superfluous

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henever the budget gets tight, the age-old large-vs.-small-carrier debate seems to resurface; it has risen again with an article by Navy Capt. Henry J. Hendrix and retired Marine Lt. Col. J. Noel Williams.

In arguing their case that the age of the supercarrier is on the wane, the authors espouse the supposed advantages of using an increased number of smaller ships in place of large carriers. But that viewpoint is based on false assumptions and flawed premises, and the summary conclusion that the supercarrier suffers a “declining utility” is often stated but never proved.

The challenge in the maritime environment is this: developing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities as well as remote-targeting capability. To merely assume that initial operational capability of the Chinese DF-21D antiship ballistic missile means the death knell of the large aircraft carrier (a popular mantra now with the anti-large-carrier contingent) is to not understand the full requirements of a successful kill-chain.

The notion that the aircraft carrier’s radar signature will be the carrier strike group’s Achilles’ heel is wrong. Current Navy and Department of Defense efforts to combat the DF-21 threat focus on the entire kill-chain to assure access for our maritime forces. The DF-21 is a chess move against our

U.S. Navy photo by MaSS CoMMUNiCatioN SpeCialiSt 3rd ClaSS robert robbiNS

lARGe-Deck CarrierS Still eSSential

Lt. Cmdr. Jessica R. Parker, catapult officer, gives the signal for launch to the pilot of an F/A-18E/F Super Hornet aboard USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72).

carriers. The United States holds the advantage. It is folly to think that strike-group commanders would not fight in the event of a conflict with China that puts our carriers at risk. Risk calculus will be assessed in the same manner it was assessed for the four decades of the Cold War, against an adversary with fleets and aircraft of dedicated “carrier killers.”

Marginal Savings, Significant Limitations Since 1957, carrier studies have reached a consistent

conclusion: Large-displacement, nuclear-powered carriers capable of launching and recovering an 80-aircraft air wing consisting of current and future-generation aircraft provide inherent mission flexibility and breadth, mobility, survivability, connectability, seakeeping, and sustainability. No fewer than 76 studies were conducted in the CVX nextgenerationaircraftcarrier“Analysis of Alternatives” underpinning the design of the new Gerald R. Ford class. These studies, held in three parts from October 1996

to October 2000, concluded that the Nimitz-class follow-on should be designed for a large air wing, should have catapults and arresting gear, should benefit from nuclear power, and should be based on a modified Nimitz-class design due to budget limits.

A September 1998 Defense Acquisition Board affirmed these studies and endorsed the Fordclass design. In a forthcoming study, the RAND Corporation highly rates the Ford class across a wide range of parameters, including mission flexibility, humanitarian support, operating-area access, availability, and interoperability vs. smaller design concepts. The same RAND research found that the Ford-class design accommodates 75 days of ship stores, steams 14 days between underway replenishments, carries 9,275 metric tons of aviation fuel, has 375,000 cubic feet of ordnance storage, and produces 500,000 gallons of fresh water per day.

All of these metrics far exceed those of any comparable-mission ship design.

These studies note that smaller, mid-sized carriers provide only marginal cost savings but result in significant operational limitations.

The Center for Naval Analyses noted in its November 1997 study that the “size of the carrier matters most when the carrier is operating alone, at the beginning of the conflict, and in a high threat environment,” and RAND states that a “small CVN (less than 90,000 tons) cannot meet the threat.”

The America and similar amphibious-assault vessels are ideally suited for their mission: close-in amphibious support to the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF).

Stripped of their rotorcraft, the deck size is postulated to handle two squadrons of F-35s—an unconstrained prediction based on PowerPoint slides more than real-world demonstration. The reduced capability of a 45,000-ton ship carrying short- takeoff/verticallanding (STOVL) strike-fighters to generate sorties would be so dramatic as to make this platform far less capable across the range of military options than it would be with a full MAGTF air-combat element with its combination of rotor, tilt-rotor, and STOVL aircraft.

A “high/low” or “light/heavy” mix with the supercarriers as LargE-DEck CoNTiNUEd oN 11

“Twilight of the $UPERfluous Carrier” is adapted from an article that appeared in the May 2011 issue of the U.S. Naval Institute magazine, Proceedings.

“The Supercarrier is NOT Superfluous” is adapted from a response published in the September 2011 issue. These are republished with permission.

AccommoDAte rotary airCraft

When It Comes to Aircraft Carriers, Other Nations Think Small

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espite the alarm sounded in some quarters by the sea trial in August of a Chinese aircraft carrier, the nations of the world do not come even close to approaching the power projected by the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier fleet.

The United States fleet not only overshadows other navies in sheer numbers, the size of its supercarriers far exceeds the aircraft-transporting ships of other countries, said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military intelligence think tank.

If the LHD-1 Wasp amphibious assault ships are included, the United States operates 20 carriers—twice the number in use by the rest of the world’s navies combined. Those 20 American carriers add up to nearly 70 acres of deck space, almost five times more than the less than 15 acres of deck space aboard the carriers of other nations, according to GlobalSecurity.org.

“The real future of naval aviation is amphibious assault ships because people have gone berserk in the last decade over the amphibious assault ship. It is usable military power,” Pike said. The smaller carriers can get closer to land and accommodate helicopters and combined rotary-fixed wing aircraft that

are becoming standard in naval warfare, he said.

Of the nine countries (Brazil, France, India, Italy, Russia, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, and the United States) that currently possess ships with open flight decks, only four (Brazil, United States, France and Russia) accommodate fixed-wing aircraft, while six (Spain, United States, Great Britain, India, Italy and Thailand) transport short take-off/ verticle landing (STOVL) aircraft, according to GlobalSecurity.org.

Great Britain plans to construct two large-deck carriers and India plans to build two carriers and rebuild a third.

“There’s just been an enormous outburst of shipbuilding,” Pike said. “A century ago if you asked what was the currency in which naval power was denominated, it would be dreadnaughts, all big gun ships.” After World War I, naval power was measured in the tonnage of battleships.

“Then for a while we measured naval power with aircraft carriers,

and every self-respecting country had to have an aircraft carrier,” he said. “But over time the airplanes got to be too big, and over time one by one a lot of these countries that had picked up war surplus aircraft carriers gave them up because they could no longer find airplanes that were small enough to fit.” Argentina and Canada are among those countries.

“In the 21st century, usable naval power projection is defined by amphibious assault ships.

There are a number of countries that have decided that they want a seat at that table,” he said.

Military capabilities are pricing nations out of the market, he said. Stealth fighters are the state of the art now. The United States will have two types: the F-22 and F-35. China, Russia and India have designed their own stealth fighters. Beyond that, “a dozen countries will buy the single-engine F-35 stealths and everybody else is just going to get by without it,” Pike said.

The big-deck carriers owned

by most other countries—Russia, Thailand and the Ukrainian-built Chinese aircraft carrier—are not very functional, Pike said.

The amphibious assault ships are less expensive to build and maintain, and they effectively transport troops to a battle or a disaster, he added.

“The next time there’s a peace enforcement operation like Libya, they want a ship to fly attack helicopters from off shore. The next time there’s a tsunami, they want a ship that can go over to the shore, doesn’t have to find navigable waters and an intact dock in order to be of service.

Now I have a navy I can explain to people. Now I’ve got a navy where I can see where tax dollars are at work and we’re an important country that matters,” Pike said.

The smaller carriers work for a nation that isn’t inherently a maritime power, but the United States still needs supercarriers, said Owen R. Coté Jr., associate director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The main thing about a big carrier is it’s efficient and it can conveniently carry an airwing that includes all the components that you need. You can have 5 E-2 Hawkeyes on it, 5 Growlers on it. You can have 5-10 ASW (antisubmarine warfare) helicopters and 40 strike fighters,” he said.

A small deck carrier cannot accommodate that kind of air wing, he said.

“The deck is big enough for specialized airplanes like the new E-2D that are absolutely necessary for higher threat environments,” Coté said. Despite the higher initial cost, nuclear-powered supercarriers also provide a much longer lifecycle than smaller vessels, staying at sea longer without needing to be refueled and resupplied.

“I worry more about the Chinese submarines and ocean surveillance sensor” than the smaller aircraft carrier it’s testing, Coté said. “The carrier is sort of symbolic at this point.” 

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helicopter sea combat detatchment

Maintenance Crew Keeps Aircraft Flying

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Even with the helicopter away from the ship on a mission, the maintainers are busy. From maintaining support equipment, ordering parts, and generating detailed documentation of aircraft inspections to mastering aircraft systems and studying for qualifications, they have little time to relax.

All helicopter maintainers must be expert tradesmen in their craft.

Whether focusing on ordnance, power plant systems, airframe systems, electronics, avionics, survival equipment systems or maintenance administration, each plays a vital role in keeping the helicopter operational. The level of knowledge that our maintainers possess is astounding. Even more, each helicopter maintainer, while a technical expert in a specific aircraft specialty, must be proficient in multiple aspects of helicopter maintenance. With the small number of maintainers on board, each must know everyone else’s job.

From the moment our wheels hit the cruiser deck on landing, this tight family goes to work.

Photo by Petty officer 1st class Justin Wright

here is little down time in the HSC-8 Detachment 1 maintenance shop. Just 14 aircraft maintainers on board the Navy cruiser USS Mobile Bay are charged with keeping our detachment helicopter, a MH-60S Knighthawk, in a continuous, fully mission-capable flying status. This is half the number of maintainers per helicopter that the squadrons operate with aboard an aircraft carrier. We must be ready to fly at a moment’s notice. The maintainers know this helicopter, the intimate details and idiosyncrasies, from spending at times 18-hour days focused on its needs.

due to high winds and rough seas, main rotor blades' tips must be secured with clamps and lines to prevent damage to the aircraft or injury to personnel walking underneath them.

The aviation ordnanceman is the first maintainer to touch the helicopter on deck. Often times that is Petty Officer 2nd Class Kelton Masterson, a cross-rated Parachute Rigger. He makes sure the aircraft ordnance is safe so other maintainers can perform their work. He rushes into the

spinning rotor arc at the 3 o’clock position, then scurries aft of the engine toward the tail, ducking under the 100 mph, 300-degree exhaust of the number 2 engine.

In position near the chaff and flare dispenser, with only 3 feet of clearance between his head and the still-spinning main rotor, he

surface combatants. Their design essentials make them perfect carriers of unmanned systems.

The new combatants would be “carriers,” but rather than carrying aircraft, they would carry an array of unmanned systems.

A balanced Fleet would have a mix of small, medium, and large unmanned carrier combatants to cover the range of Fleet functions. One near-term option would be to truncate production of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and replace both that and the Dock Landing Ship (LSD) with a common hull displacing around 10,000 tons.

subsurface vehicles. Building 60 of these combatants would provide significant flexibility to the Fleet, allowing ships performing LCS missions to be easily sortied as amphibs in support of a large amphibious mission, should the need arise. Those ships would provide a platform for engagement missions and humanitarian-assistance/ disaster-relief response at one end and amphibious operations and sea control at the other.

This sort of mission flexibility should be considered a key design attribute for any future combatant.

Having more ships would allow the Fleet to operate forward in more places. Further, more numerous, smaller vessels would provide a resilient and survivable high-low mix. Technology enables a small signature-controlled combatant to take advantage of the longrange precision strike otherwise

secures the dispenser and puts it in safe mode.

Head low, he moves up the right side of the aircraft. He disables the Hellfire missiles and ensures the M240D, a 7.62 mm machine gun, is clear and safe.

He scurries around the nose and repeats this process with the weapons on the left side of the aircraft. The helicopter is safe to shutdown. The rotor blades begin to slow down and gradually cease spinning.

The detachment maintainers materializefrombehindthehangar with their support equipment and take over. Aviation Electronics Technician Petty Officer George Hohnsbehn directs this chaotic ballet while the maintenance Chief Petty Officer Marcus Moore supervises to ensure the perilous environment of the cruiser’s pint-sized flight deck is as safe as possible. Maintainers have minimal room to move on a flight deck about half the size of a basketball court, most of which the Knighthawk occupies. Wind and salt spray beat the flight deck crew and coat everything, including the aircraft, with a greasy slush of salt, fuel, oil, water, and grime. Occasionally the tops of massive waves lick the flight deck as the cruiser cuts through 10-foot waves.

“It’sanunbelievablyinhospitable place. On the flight deck, it’s 140 degrees during the day, it’s 95 degrees at night, pitch black, windy, and the deck rolls around

a lot,” Petty Officer Hoensbehn said. There are no deck railings between the crew and the ocean below; just a metal safety net slightly illuminated by the cool green deck edge lights.

Despite the challenging flight deck environment, the maintainers are on a compressed schedule. They have to get the helicopter ready to fly by the next morning. Plane captains need to analyze fuel samples, check hydraulic oil levels and ensure transmission fluids are free of contamination. They also must check the airframe and engines for fatigue stress and corrosion.

The ordnancemen clean the weapons and reload and ground test the countermeasure systems to ensure the weapons will operate properly if the flight crews ever need them. Specialized software is loaded into a variety of secure-voice, long-range radios and mission systems by the Avionics Electronics Technicians, ensuring tactical information can be collected and sent to the ship’s intelligence office or the carrier for review and analysis.

“With little to no warning, we can be called upon to protect the ships in our strike group, conduct search and rescue, provide special warfare support or humanitarian assistance, among many other things,” said Lieutenant Commander Josh Ellison, one of the four pilots in the detachment and our Officer-in-Charge. “We have a truly impressive team of

associated with larger platforms.

Given the strong capabilities of each component, there is no single point of failure, and the system would attrite gracefully, in contrast to the catastrophic failure the loss of a supercarrier would entail with today’s Fleet.

The course of technological development renders a Fleet

incorporating the design principles discussed here inevitable. With emerging-threat and economic challenges, it is essential we as a nation recognize the need for a new Fleet design sooner rather than later. We can raise an Army in years, but building a Navy takes decades.

maintainers who make it possible for the pilots and aircrew to answer the call right away.”

Over the last century of naval aviation, the need for aircraft maintenance grew as aircraft became increasingly complex. While pilots put these sophisticated machines through their paces in the sky, these workhorses would be useless scraps of metal if not for dedicated crews of aircraft maintainers. When I first began flying helicopters as a student in 2009, I was far removed from the day-to-day grueling maintenance that takes place. It was not until reporting to my first fleet squadron, and now on my first deployment, that I see just how much devotion, skill, and hard work go into making these complex machines safe to fly and able to execute their missions.

As people on the ground look up and watch these aircraft, they may not realize how much dedicated work goes into maintaining them. We, as pilots and aircrew, readily put our lives in our maintainers’ hands. Out here in the Arabian Sea, I am convinced that we are the most powerful, ready and flexible naval air force in the world, in large part because of these hard-working and singularly capable men and women. 

By LieuteNANt JuNior GrAde stepheN deFAzio

DEPLOY Continued from 6

unidentifiable locations should competitors choose to attack American national interests anywhere on the planet.

However, as shown by other nations throughout the AsiaPacific region, the United States cannot place all of its emphasis on submarines to perform dayto-day presence missions. To be an effective agent of American influence, a platform must be seen, and the nation must be perceived to be taking the risks that go along with presence operations just like any other nation. The United States requires an effective surface fleet—but not the one currently planned.

Ironically, one of the most maligned and dismissed components of the current Fleet already has the fundam ental attributes needed to meet tomorrow’s challenges. Amphibious ships are the prototypes for future

America the Beautiful That small amphib would have a flight deck capable of handling all naval rotorcraft and a well-deck that could accommodate current ship-to-shore connectors, as well as future unmanned surface and

still No substitute The assumption that new, smaller, unmanned aircraft as well as STOVL capability will supersede carrier power projection and air dominance violates first, the laws of physics, and second, rules of engagement. To fulfill the “one target: one weapon” goal, aircraft will have to be capable of launching with an employable payload against a representative target. Weapons in this class weigh 500 to 2,000 pounds, a design constraint for smaller and/ or STOVL designs when payload carriage and weapons bring-back are key performance parameters.

Unmanned aircraft offer many advantages, which is why the Navy is demonstrating the N-UCAS X-47 and developing the follow-on Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) system.

These unmanned aircraft will become a part of the carrier

air wing as early as 2018, complementing a mix of survivable first-day-of-war penetrators and high-capacity strike-fighters with a persistent, long-range ISR and strike capability.

But the artificial intelligence needed for these vehicles to operate autonomously is far into the future, circa 2050. These limitations and realities constrain presumptions about autonomous networks of smaller, unmanned vehicles to fantasy, not reality, in the next four decades.

Notably, these systems will not cost less than similar, manned systems because the mission set requires investment in high-end technology. The conclusion that UCLASS is a more cost-effective solution to fifth-generation mission sets is uninformed. superior sortie Capability Much has been made of the cost of the large-deck aircraft carrier. It is one thing to point at the high dollar cost and quite another to assess the value of the weapon system—the operational capability. Comparison of the newest carrier system against a 1976 Nimitz baseline is inappropriate, as budgets that are three decades old and existed in a different world order are irrelevant.

A 2006 study revealed that the average annual nuclear-carrier price inflation was 7.4 percent from 1950 to 2000. This was attributed mostly to increases in capability and governmentfurnished equipment, as well as economic factors such as labor and material costs. Notably, RAND found that costs rose much less steeply for aircraft carriers than they did for surface combatants, nuclear-powered submarines, and amphibious ships.

An analysis of the contract costs of all ships in the Nimitz class shows that the follow-ship costs are fairly steady. Thus, follow-on vessels of the Ford class will cost less to launch in constant-year dollars. Additionally, Ford capability improvements, which resulted in three times more electrical power and a 25 percent increase in sortie generation, achieved a $5.5 billion total-ownership cost reduction, including a reduction of maintenance requirements by 30 percent. The advanced design and inherent technology of the Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) allow the use of smaller aircraft-launch-andrecovery-equipment teams and lower sustainment costs while expanding the flexibility of the carrier decks to accommodate the broad array of possible aircraft.

Overall, the technology embedded in the Ford design allows crewsize reduction to 4,660 from nearly 6,000 required to operate Nimitz-class carriers.

An investment in Worldwide presence Several countries with interest in maritime influence are sailing or building aircraft carriers, China being the most recent fledgling notable. The British, French, and Italians have a long history of carrier operations. For the United States, the inescapable culmination of the carrier debate is the investment the country makes in worldwide presence, sea control, maritimedomain primacy, and influencing potential areas of conflict.

The debate is not about the dollar cost, it is about the value of American influence. The mighty carriers of the U.S. Navy carry not just F/A-18s, but also a set of understandings about what it means to be a powerful nation.

By CApt. Christopher J. MurrAy, u.s. NAvy

Capt. Murray is head of Strike Aircraft Plans and Requirements in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

WiLLiAMs, u.s. MAriNe Corps (retired)

Capt. Hendrix is a strategist in the Pentagon. He is a naval flight officer and former aviation squadron commanding officer. Lt. Col. Williams works as a strategy and policy analyst at Headquarters Marine Corps.

proven

LARGE-DECK Continued from 6

surge forces would be prohibitively expensive to acquire, operate and sustain. The inherent flexibility of the large-deck nuclear carrier fielded in the correct numbers is the most cost-effective way to service combatant-commander missions. Congress has mandated by law a floor of 11 carriers and 10 carrier air wings.

But perhaps 11 will not be enough in an unknown, future world order of regional conflict prowled by ambitious and aggressive adversaries. Most experts fear that our carrier capability is stretched too thin, and they are very concerned about what will happen in 2013 when the 51-year-old nuclear supercarrier USS Enterprise (CVN65) is retired. The replacement, the Gerald R. Ford, is not scheduled to be commissioned until late 2015.

By CAptAiN heNry J. heNdrix, u.s.

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THE FUTURE OF Naval aviatioN expendable air vehicles

UNMANNED TECHNOLOGY CoNTINUED FRoM 1

photo CoUrteSy of UniverSal StUdioS.

Small UAVs Play Growing Role in Navy Arsenal

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In the 1984 movie, "The Last Starfighter," an American teenager is recruited to take his video gaming skills into real battle to save the galaxy. Will the Navy soon be recruiting pilots for unmanned vehicles based on similar skills?

force of battleships or serve as their own new form of battle fleet.

For all the excitement of such programs, it is important to realize two things. The first is that we are only at the start of this robotic revolution at sea, the World War I stage of things, if airplanes are a parallel. Indeed, just as the first Navy planes started out just for observation and soon began to be used for everything from bombing runs to carrier onboard delivery (COD), so we are seeing a similar expansion with unmanned systems. But just like back then, we don’t yet have all the answers as to the optimal roles and doctrine. Even the basic design of this technology remains to be learned and adopted. The next few decades will be an exciting time, with new paths being forged, much like they were by the first generation of naval aviation pioneers.

The second lesson, though, is that despite its relentless

advancement, there are no signs that technology will end the central role of humans in war and at sea any time soon. The specifics of the human roles may be altered, certainly; most Navy warplanes today don’t have tail gunners or navigators. And the skill sets and ranks of those who wear the wings of gold might change; does the remote operator of a plane that can take off and land on its own, who is sitting behind a computer screen, actually need 20/20 eyesight or the ability to do 50 sit-ups? Do they even need to be an officer?

But war will remain that same at its essence: a human affair fought because of human needs, desires, and flaws. And for that reason, we can be certain of one thing: the America of the future will still need the same thing it needed in the last 100 years, the men and women of a strong and powerful Navy to ensure her security.

By P.W. SINGER

P.W. Singer is senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at The Brookings Institution and the author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.

Freed of the need to accommodate a pilot, and armed with the microtechnology that powers cellphones, scientists are working on small, relatively inexpensive and often autonomous aerial vehicles to support the work of the armed forces.

Small UAVs perform missions that are too dull, dirty, dangerous or expensive for other manned and unmanned aircraft. For example, expendable UAVs flew sensors inside the towers of the Fukushima, Japan, nuclear power plant after it was damaged by the March earthquake and tsunami.

For 32 years, Richard J. Foch has conceived, planned and researched devices for the Naval Research Laboratory, Tactical Electronic Warfare Division. Trained as a mechanical and aerospace engineer, Foch works on multidisciplinary teams. Electrical engineers contribute to projects involving electrical warfare, while material scientists provide their expertise on issues involving coatings and epoxies for vehicles. Chemical engineers help to develop fuel cells and aerospace engineers work on space technology.

Each scientist at the lab works on three to five projects at once, perhaps being project manager on one team, working on designs for another project, conducting computer simulations for another, and contributing to development of a prototype for another, Foch said. NRL staff members do the concept work and demonstrate the capabilities, and then the design goes to industry for production.

“Our job is to show what can be done, show it in operation. We take risks that industry can’t,” Foch said recently in his office at the NRL, on the 131-acre campus just south of Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. Since 1985, NRL’s Expendable Air Vehicle Research group has contributed to more than 54 programs and developed more than 250 vehicles on a $175 million investment. At times it assists or develops just pieces of larger projects by other agencies such as the U.S. Air Force, NASA, Naval Air Station China Lake, and sometimes industry.

“I was told, ‘You’ll be lucky if you get one thing produced’” as an experimental designer, Foch said. “I’m lucky, I’m having two.” The Dragon Eye, the first autonomous expendable small UAV in production, was used for urban reconnaissance in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ALE-50 towed decoy system was first deployed in 1996 and is still in use.

The XFC (eXperimental Fuel Cell), a self-launching long-endurance electric unmanned aerial system, probably will be the third project Foch has worked on to go into full production. It is in its fifth year of

U.S. navy photo by Kelly SChindler

ot all the unmanned aerial vehicles in the Navy’s arsenal are deadly Reaper drones.

Some are so small they look like toys. Others are launched with a toss, just as a model airplane is sent aloft.

An MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) successfully completes the first unmanned biofuel flight at Patuxent River, Md., on Sept. 30. The aircraft flew with a combination of JP-5 aviation fuel and plant-based non-food source camellia.

development and soon will be ready to go to bid.

“Three patents are pending and we’ve got several companies that will be bidding to further develop the technology. We license the technology to all of them, and the project could be completed, ready for production in two or three more years,” Foch said.

The XFC can be launched from the ground, off a ship’s deck or

from a submarine. It is launched from a 19-inch tube, a little smaller than the torpedo tube, and can fly for about six hours on reconnaissance missions. The UAV includes interchangeable noses that can be equipped with both a camera and a tactical electronic warfare payload. With its electronic payload, it could act as a decoy.

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uav missions expanding

More Unmanned Systems Taking off in Future

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systems (UAS) will continue to take on many of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) tasks for the Navy. So far, the Navy has not emphasized combat missions for UAVs, as the Air Force has with its Predator.

“I think right now the real value that unmanned gets you is endurance,” said Owen R. Coté Jr., assistant director of the Security Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “People talk about unmanned that you don’t have to worry about losing the pilot. But a lot of them cost a lot of money.

They aren’t disposable.”

The newest thing in military aviation isn’t completely new. The Dahlgren Naval Surface Weapon Center, using a pioneering radio control system developed by

U.S. navy photo CoUrteSy northrop GrUMMan

Also in 2013, the MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned helicopter will become the first seabased unmanned system to carry weapons, when Northrop Grumman delivers the first Fire Scouts equipped with laserguided missiles.

Does this spell the end of the Navy pilot?

“You’re talking to a pilot,” laughed Rear Admiral (select) DeWolfe Miller, director of the Navy’s Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Capabilities division, who has made 850 carrier-arrested landings.

“I don’t really see that happening any time soon, even despite the tremendous strides in what unmanned systems can do.”

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and unmanned aircraft

An X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator completes its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base on Feb. 4, 2011.

the Naval Research Laboratory flew the first remotely piloted aircraft, the Wild Goose, in 1924.

A World War I Navy advanced trainer, the Curtiss N-9H, was converted to a radio-controlled drone and successfully flew 40 minutes before being damaged on landing. During its flight time, it executed 49 commands.

In the 1960s, UAVs were used as target drones and for stealth surveillance. Cruise missiles also are antecedents to today’s UAVS. The Navy and Marine Corps have operated the Pioneer UAV system since 1986. Once during Desert Storm, Iraqi troops actually surrendered to a Pioneer.

Unmanned vehicles have become a fixture in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and important new platforms are in the works.

In addition to the Pegasus and Fire Scout, the Navy is awaiting delivery in about four years of the MQ-4C Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) aircraft, which is a maritime variation of the Northrop Grumman RQ-1 Global Hawk UAV. In June, the Navy awarded Boeing a study contract toward the development of an Unmanned Carrier Launch Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) system to provide persistent ISR and precision strike capabilities. The Navy wants that system by 2018.

All the U.S. military services have been employing UAVs, but the Navy has special requirements. Naval UAVs must withstand the corrosive effects of the salt-air environment and undergo special maintenance procedures, Miller said.

“Basically any air-capable ship that the Navy has, from the littoral combat ship to amphibious assault ships to aircraft carriers, you will see them populated with unmanned systems,” Miller said.

John Pike, founder and director of the GlobalSecurity.org think tank, thinks the F-35 Lightning now under development could be the last jet fighter with human pilots.

“I really think that they’re going to have a big ceremony one day and stop the line and cut a ribbon and point to the last one that had

U.S. Marine CorpS photo by Corporal billy hall

n July a piloted F/A 18 jet tested software and systems developed for the X-47 Pegasus unmanned aerial vehicle to successfully land on the deck of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. Northrop Grumman says demonstration of carrier takeoffs and recovery by the unmanned aircraft is just two years away.

Lance Cpl. Malcomlynd Williams prepares to launch a Raven B Unmanned Air Vehicle during an operators course in Al Qa'im, Iraq, in 2008.

A training team provided the Marines with a two-day course on how to effectively operate the lightweight, hand-launched UAV that was replacing the Dragon Eye.

an ejection seat in it and see the first one that doesn’t,” he said.

“I don’t think the F-35 is the last piloted plane,” Coté said.

“I do think there’s always going to be value in having people colocating with the sensors and the weapons with certain kinds of missions,” he said, particularly those involving mobile targets in cluttered environments such as cruise missiles and tactical ballistic missiles.

Rear Admiral William E. Leigher, director of Warfare Integration for Information Dominance, said the determinations would be based on “what we want a human pilot to do because of intuition and interactiveness versus a job that we’re pretty comfortable putting in an autonomous setting because it’s straightforward.”

“I am pretty certain that autonomy and increasing levels of autonomy will be a future feature of all types of vehicles: air, land, sea and space,” said Richard J. Foch, a senior scientist with the Naval Research Laboratory, who has worked with unmanned vehicles for decades. Next year NRL will open its new Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research to advance that work.

“The main issues to be worked out on autonomy are those primarily involving the level of autonomy we prefer to bestow on them, and to what capacity will we want them to self-learn, adapt and perhaps self-evolve. So the issues on artificial intelligence for UAVs are more social/political/ ethical than technological—in my opinion,” Foch said.

Naval historian Thomas Hone said he envisions a time when rather than having four pilots traveling together, pilots may fly with unmanned vehicles under their control, coordinating with them like fingers, commanding them to deploy to the next formation. “I tell aviators, just dream,” he said. “‘Unmanned system’ just means there’s not a pilot or aircrew in the airframe itself. There’s a ton of hard-charging, dedicated young men and women doing the operating,processing,maintenance and planning,” Miller said. Until recently, the control has been like a weekend hobbyist flying a remotecontrol plane, he said. Now the control often is made by a click of a computer mouse.

In the Navy, aviators undertake the piloting aspects of operating

the UAVs, but that may change over time, Miller said.

The seniority and rank of the individuals who operate the systems may depend on the type of system and its mission.

Recruits are coming into the Navy already with technical savvy, just because it’s so much a part of the culture, he added.

The Navy also must resolve how to process the data flowing in from the long-endurance sensors on UAVs gathering information.

For example, a minute of video takes two minutes to transfer off the platform, Leigher said.

“None of the services are growing right now. I’ve got more information coming into the same analytical pool that’s doing this work,” he said.

Artificial intelligence will be incorporated into future sensors, to discriminate among data and not transmit that which is not needed, he said.

Considering the progress the Navy has made since Eugene Ely took off in his Curtiss pusher plane from a makeshift ship’s platform in 1910, Miller noted, looking ahead to the state of unmanned vehicles in 100 years is “a pretty difficult task to envision.” 

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U.S. Navy photo by MaSS CoMMUNiCatioN SpeCialiSt 2Nd ClaSS JoSeph M. bUliavaC

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2011

be done to ensure that a longterm ocean system does not cause a negative environmental impact, he said.

Affordable Expendability Most of NRL’s Small UAVs, including the XFC, are not even designed to land. For example, when used as a decoy, the UAS will be hit by a missile, diverting a weapon that targets a Navy vessel. At a cost of $50,000 each, including military specifications, they are designed “to carry a payload that makes a $1 million missile useless.”

Particularly at the conceptual stage, the small UAVs do not necessarily contain state-of-theart materials. When possible, the designers use off-the-shelf materials. Some model airplane parts even exceed military specifications, Foch said.

For the small UAVs, the investment in individual units is small. Their intrinsic value is the payloads they carry and the importance of their missions. The small UAV, Foch said, “is just the bus to carry the payload.”

NRL has tested an aircraft that isn’t just expendable, it’s disposable. The Close-in Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft (CICADA) is designed to carry tiny sensors and deploy in large groups, guided by GPS. Weighing less than 8 ounces, the micro UAVs would cost only about $100 each.

A Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) launches from the flight deck of the amphibious dock landing ship USS Comstock (LSD 45). Scan Eagle is a runway independent, long-endurance, unmanned aerial vehicle system designed to provide multiple surveillance, reconnaissance data, and battlefield damage assessment missions.

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“If a missile’s headed for a cruiser or a carrier, a decoy will divert it to itself, so all you’re losing is a $20,000 airplane,” Foch explained.

The self-launching XFC required different thinking to design. Rather than focusing on building a flying machine, the team started with a design that was easy to unfold and then turned it into a good airplane, he said. The result: a 5-foot fuselage with a pair of wings that pivot outward into an “X” shape when launched. When in place, the wings look strangely bird-like, with a missile-shaped body.

NRL researchers also are working on the first UAV to launch from a UAV. As a General Atomics Predator destroys a target, the Flight Inserted Detector Expendable for Reconnaissance (FINDER) will launch from the drone to fly to the explosion and bring back samples for analysis. In this way, crews can determine whether chemical agents existed in facilities suspected of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.

“We’ve really improved the capability of the Predator in

the case of battlefield damage assessment,” Foch said.

Generally NRL’s expendable air vehicle projects take three to five years to reach the production stage. Tomorrow’s small unmanned vehicles likely will include these features: Autonomy Operators flying UAVs often are based remotely, sometimes hundreds of miles away. The need to stay tethered by communications satellites leaves the operations vulnerable to disruption by an adversary.

One way UAVs can operate without a satellite is to navigate without GPS. Engineers have studied how insects and humans use optic flow—visual motion—to detect changes between speed and depth in order to navigate themselves. Using textured material running down the middle of a hallway, the scientists can adjust the sensors’ ability to digitize an image and then analyze it to determine how to avoid obstacles. Ultimately, a micro UAV can fly down the hallway without GPS. If it veers closer to the wall, energy goes to the sensors, causing the plane to adjust just as instinct causes an insect to adjust, Foch said.

NRL teams will further their

work with artificial intelligence in the new Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research, due to open next spring.

Researchers will be able to test the systems in realistic environments, including a desert,

nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that transports it. “A nuclear vessel could make hydrogen and oxygen right on the ship from water,” Foch said. “You just need to electrolize the water. The hydrogen fuel cells work better

You can imagine flying (a 'Flimmer') within 200 miles of where you can’t go. It flies the rest of the way undetected, then submerges and flaps its wings like a manta ray.

— richard J. Foch, senior scientist for expendable vehicles for the Naval research laboratory

the arctic and a forest. Every wall and floor will be covered in sensors to measure the actions of UAVs and the people working with them, Foch said. One end of the building is an entire Tropical jungle with living insects and plants and natural light.

“Now we will also be able to test human interactions with the vehicles in the lab. You can study the guys operating the machine,” Foch said.

than the others that have been used. So if you’re by a water source and have electrical power, you can make fuel.”

Even better, the exhaust from hydrogen-powered fuel cells is simply water. For military purposes, the fuel cell excels because it is quiet and causes little heat that can be detected by adversaries.

NRL is working with General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy to develop hydrogenpowered fuel cells for many applications, as exemplified by GM’s fuel cell-powered car.

“People think the Hindenburg blew up because it was filled with

Alternative Energy Not too far into the future, small UAVs will be able to operate on hydrogen fuel cells powered by using electricity from the

hydrogen to provide its buoyancy.

But the problem was the skin, which was treated with a coating that was basically solid rocket fuel. It acted as a flying wick.

Hydrogen is actually a fairly safe fuel,” Foch explained.

The Dragon Eye UAV was powered electrically by a lithium battery. It could fly just 60 minutes, far below what is possible with the kind of advanced high power fuel cells available now. A similar UAV has flown for 26 hours. Foch said he hopes to increase the time to 72 hours within the next year.

Beyond fuel cells, researchers are investigating self-replenishment, making a system that can feed itself. “We’d like to build a UAS that could go to water and eat garbage. There’s an Army system that eats biomatter for fuel,” Foch said.

The technology exists to extract energy from microorganism’s bioenergy in the seabed. If an autonomous system could do that, the unit could sustain itself on long-term missions over a large area.

Space rovers are similar, but they can extract energy from the sun, Foch said. Under the sea, a vehicle cannot depend on the sun and must adjust to the current. Further, work needs to

Dual Mobility Another step forward in UAS development will be to create systems that can function in two ways: fly-crawl, fly-swim or swim-fly. Foch is currently working on what he calls “Flimmers.” His team is evaluating proposals to develop the surveillance and reconnaissance air- and seacraft further.

“You can imagine flying it within 200 miles of where you can’t go. It flies the rest of the way undetected, then submerges and flaps its wings like a manta ray,” Foch said.

“It’s not trivial to both fly and swim.”

The device would navigate, but not with GPS. After a design and development phase that would take four or five years, a prototype could be demonstrated.

There’s no telling what the Flimmer will look like.

“We know how fish swim and bumble bees fly,” Foch said. Scientists will use the biometric information they have from these animals to design a robot that works.

“We have built flying machines that flap but don’t look like birds. They fly and swim, but they do not look like a bird or a fish,” Foch said.

The goal is to build long-range, long-endurance multimodal vehicles. Like Marines, they would operate on the ground, in the air and on the sea. 

fits inside a backpack

Dragon Eye UAV Quickly Answered Marine Call for Help U.S. MariNe CorpS photo by laNCe Corporal ChriStopher G. GrahaM

But sometimes a solution is needed right away, as with the Dragon Eye small UAV. The Dragon Eye took only 30 months from the Secretary of the Navy’s approval of the idea to the battlefield in Afghanistan, said Richard J. Foch, an NRL senior scientist and one of the lead developers.

In late 2001, small units of Marines in Afghanistan were finding themselves surrounded by insurgents, and they needed a way to see if where they were heading was safe. NRL was asked to work with the Marine Warfighting Lab to develop a local-area surveillance device that was easy to use and transport.

The scientists first had to prove that the technology was ready. Foch said that a few staff members in NRL's vehicle research section deployed an NRL micro air vehicle follow and record then-Brig. Gen. Timothy E. Donovan, vice chief of naval research/commanding general of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, as he left his home and traveled to his office to meet with NRL's staff. There, he was surprised to watch himself on video making the trip.

The scientists used existing micro UAV technology and offthe-shelf materials to create the Dragon Eye, a 4.5-lb., battery-

U.S. MariNe CorpS photo by SGt. KriStiN S. JoChUMS

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aval Research Laboratory (NRL) scientists working on unmanned vehicles usually spend three to five years taking an idea to concept testing before it goes on to a manufacturer for development.

Three Marines were responsible for repairing all the Dragon Eyes for the Marine Corps.

operated aircraft. The Dragon Eye can be taken apart and fit into a standard military backpack. It comes with a miniature Ground Control Station, a laptop that controls the aircraft and receives its GPS position and video from two cameras.

The aircraft pieces can be assembled without tools in minutes. The operator types into the computer where the aircraft should go and then launches the device either with a bungee catapult or just by tossing it like a model airplane. The operator can reprogram the craft in flight, remotely steer it, or let it fly autonomously following its preset course.

“A Marine who comes out of the chow line can do it with only a few hours training,” Foch said. "Any eight-man unit equipped with a Dragon Eye can do reconnaissance for up to 10 kilometers. and see if it’s safe to bed down for the night.”

Foch said grateful Marines called him on the telephone to thank him for developing the Dragon Eye. Preproduction systems were deployed in Iraq, and the Dragon Eye served 80 missions in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004. AeroVironment has built about 1,300 Dragon Eye UAVs, though the Marines now use the company’s less expensive and lighter Raven. 

U.S. Marines prepare to launch a Dragon Eye Small Unit Remote Scouting System, outside the village of Al Qa'im, Iraq, in 2004.

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THE FUTURE OF Naval aviatioN U.S. Navy photo by MaSS CoMMUNiCatioN SpeCialiSt 3rd ClaSS billy ho

Cyber AND eLeCTrONIC WARFARE

Information is Power in Cyber and Electronic Warfare

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ommand of the airwaves is taking its place alongside command of the ocean waves in the 21st century Navy.

“If you put back the focus on a commander who it’s going to go to, you look at how you start to shape and use a wide variety of sources of information,” including data collected by the increasingly powerful and prevalent unmanned aerial vehicles, Leigher said.

“There’s a lot of room left to evolve this,” he said, comparing the future use of intelligence to the vastly different ways in which airpower is used in the Navy now compared with the 1930s and even Operation Desert Storm 20 years ago.

Traditionally, electronic warfare has involved detecting radar in the battle space and suppressing enemy radar in support of strike missions. The EA-6B Prowler and its replacement, the EA18G Growler, also can carry out electronic attacks, disrupting the communications, surveillance and reconnaissance activity of adversaries.

U.S. Navy photo by MaSS CoMMUNiCatioN SpeCialiSt 2Nd ClaSS Mark a. leoNeSio

“Information will be treated as a weapon across the full range of military operations” rather than as just a tool, according to the Navy’s Vision for Information Dominance released in May 2010.

The Navy's intelligence, cyber warfare, command and control, electronic warfare, battle management and knowledge of the maritime environment areas are being combined into a network where data can be shared across the service. More than 45,000 professionals— military and civilian—work as part of the Navy’s Information Dominance community.

Rather than organizing data based on how the information is gathered, the Navy is being tasked with focusing on the decision makers who will use the information, said Rear Admiral William E. Leigher, Navy director of Warfare Integration for Information Dominance.

A Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk fires a live AGM-114 series Hellfire laser-guided precision air-to-surface missile.

Cyber warfare and electronic warfare come together when cell phone communications and smartphone functions can be disrupted because they’re in the electro magnetic spectrum.The United States needs to protect itself against threats to its own communications, Leigher said. UAVs, for example, are designed with defenses against such disruptions.

“It’s pretty well documented that we worry about threats to cyber space. It’s an emerging threat.

Most generally, it’s an area where the attacker probably always has as an advantage the ability to hide in plain sight,” he said.

One of the challenges with cyber is that “a well funded terrorist network can move into this without having a lot of capability themselves,” Leigher said.

“A terrorist organization with funding can go to pretty well developed criminal elements and buy cyber capability. It’s different than with platformbased warfare. It takes a lot of money to buy a division of tanks and an aircraft carrier. But cyber capability is easily within reach if you’re well funded,” he said.

The threats can include damage to systems and theft of intellectual property or military secrets. Other governments as well as individuals have been accused of cyber attacks in the United States.

In 2009 the Department of Defense created the U.S. Cyber Command. Its initiatives include implementing a new doctrine, now under review, that will lay out rules of engagement against an attack in cyberspace.

The command, along with

Sailors perform pre-launch checks on an EA-18G Growler on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). The Growler combines the combat-proven F/A-18 Super Hornet with state-of-the-art electronic warfare avionics.

the Department of Homeland Security, also is piloting a program in which the government shares classified intelligence about cyber threats with participating defense contractors or their Internet providers so they can increase their defenses.

In electronic warfare, the U.S. Navy has had the advantage for years. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Navy led the progression from analog to digital technology, said Thomas C. Hone, a retired professor for the Naval War College.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the Navy pioneered the use of passive detection. With radar, a signal is sent out and then returns with information. Passive sensors watch and listen without alerting the target.

In the post-Cold War period, “We’ve become used to an environment that’s not realistic, that we’re the only game in town,” said Owen R. Coté Jr., associate director of the Security Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

With China building satellites and detection capability, “we’re

going to have to start thinking more about eluding surveillance systems,” he said. Stealth technology in materials, design and systems attempts to lower an aircraft’s signature, what can be detected by sensors. The F-35 Lightning should be an improvement over existing lowsignature technology, he said. In

addition, the Navy has invested in the E/A-18A Growler and in antiradiation missiles (ARMs), which target detection systems.

To retain dominance in the western Pacific, the United States must control the air, Coté said. That mission, he said, is best handled by the Navy and carrier aviation. 

ResouRces Web sites:

Books:

100th Anniversary of Naval Aviation Foundation www.navalaviation100.org

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century by p.W. Singer, 2009

U.S. Navy www..navy.mil U.S. Marine Corps www.marines.mil U.S. Coast Guard www.uscg.mil Naval Research Laboratory www.nrl.navy.mil U.S. Naval Institute and its Proceedings magazine www.usni.org

Air Power at Sea, A Century of U.S. Naval Aviation 1911-2011 by defense Media Network, www. defensemedianetwork.com/ publications/air-power-at-sea-acentury-of-u-s-naval-aviation/ Battle Line: The United States Navy 1919-1939 by thomas hone and trent hone, 2006

Global Security GlobalSecurity.org

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Coast Guard aVIaTION

Coast Guard Aviators Stretched, but Strong U.S. CoaSt GUard photo by petty offiCer 2nd ClaSS henry G. dUnphy

As the Coast Guard’s senior aviator and deputy commandant for mission support, Vice Adm. John P. Currier is uniquely placed to assess the status and future of USCG aviation as the service’s mission requirements continue to grow. The Coast Guard’s official aviation centennial is 2016—five years after the Navy—and it marks the arrival of Coast Guard Aviator No. 1—Elmer Stone—at the Navy’s flight school at Pensacola, Fla., where all subsequent Coast Guard pilots have been trained.

Currier spoke with writer J.R. Wilson for the recent book, Air Power at Sea: A Century of Naval Aviation 1911-2011. The following excerpt is reprinted with permission.

An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter lands at Coast Guard Sector San Diego after the medevac of an injured man from a fishing vessel 225 miles south of San Diego.

Vice Adm. John P. Currier: I think it’s very strong right now. In fixed wing, we have a long-range strategy to convert our C-130 fleet to C-130Js, which will increase our capability in that arena. Also, the replacement of our medium-range surveillance fleet with the HC-144 CASA Ocean Sentry is a priority in the next 10 years.

war plans, both from a surface and aviation perspective. In the case of a declared conflict, we are committed by law to augment the U.S. Navy requirements for aviation, and our ability to provide armed helicopters and expertise in SAR would be fully employed.

Overall, the fleet is almost two-thirds rotary. Given the missions we have, I think that’s about right, in percentage, but we could use more aircraft overall. For example, the demand for maritime patrol for the Joint Interagency Task Force is higher than we are able to meet, as are most fisheries patrols in the North Pacific and Atlantic and for armed helicopters for counter-narcotics in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

For major contingencies, such as Katrina or Deepwater Horizon, we have limited assets to draw upon. There is no surge capacity—we are fully deployed every day. So our response to emergencies is at the expense of other operations elsewhere in the country.

While the first Coast Guard aircraft were armed, more than 60 years passed without weaponized aviation. Why did you return to armed aircraft in 1999?

We are able to do great things with our aircraft, but with additional capacity and capability, we could do more for the country.

In 1999, we armed helicopters to apply warning shots—and if necessary, disabling fire—to these narcotics carriers. Following 9/11, we developed packages for protection of critical assets and infrastructure in our ports, including high-value naval assets.

What is the primary role of Coast Guard aviation today?

The security and safety of U.S. waterways. It’s an all-encompassing job that focuses basically on two channels: security for our maritime borders, inland and port coastal waters and, by extension, our maritime borders in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. In the past few decades, our SAR [search and rescue] capabilities have become highly evolved and, in the past decade, our security capability has approached that expertise as well.

Coast Guard aviators have been involved in virtually every type of manned flight, from spotter balloons to the space shuttle—and now unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Are there any frontiers yet to challenge?

I think flight test, where we continue to be involved with the Navy at Pax River [Md.] for rotary wing; some of the missions and new platforms that are developed, for surveillance or weapons or actual TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures] for helicopters across their varied mission set. And, although we are naval aviators, our continued partnership with DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and CBP [Customs and Border Protection] in protection of our ports, waterways, and even land borders.

Does Coast Guard aviation still have a combat capability?

We are written into many of the COCOM’s [combatant commanders’]

U.S. CoaSt GUard photo by petty offiCer 1St ClaSS Sara franCiS

In broad terms, what is the current state of Coast Guard aviation, assets, and programs?

Initially, we armed our helicopters specifically for counter-drug operations in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Our unarmed helicopters, while effective in detecting threats, notably go-fast drug boats, could do nothing more when we arrived overhead—and oft times the cutter would not be in position to do an intercept, so those threats passed us by.

What role will UAVs play in the Coast Guard’s future, and do you see any future need for weapons there?

A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew and personnel from the Coast Guard Base Kodiak Fire Department prepare Jimmy Cook, 48, for transfer from the rescue helicopter to an ambulance. Cook sustained a head injury from a crab pot while aboard a 70-foot fishing vessel 46 miles west of Kodiak Island, Alaska.

We will explore the use of UAVs in two ways: A high-altitude vehicle we would need for broad area maritime surveillance and vesselbased UAVs that could operate off our ships, extending not only the ship’s eyes and ears, but also, for smallboats, their reach for threat interdiction.

expected to be independent thinkers, facing situations as they evolve, and acting accordingly.

What do you see for the future of the Coast Guard?

At this point, our doctrine for airborne use of force is helicopter-based.

Due to the strategies and tactics we use for employment, I don’t see a need, at least in the near term, for weaponized UAVs for the Coast Guard.

I think we have a strong future. We are a unique instrument in our national toolbox for safety and security and our relevance, despite our small size, is reinforced through the performance of our people. No other organization, national or international, has the span of responsibilities we have in the context of maritime safety and security.

How do Coast Guard aviators differ from their Navy, Marine, Army, and Air Force counterparts?

That is both our strength and our weakness. Building support for 11 different missions is more difficult than trying to resource a single mission. So our survival mechanism in the world of competition for resources is outstanding performance; if we can’t set the bar high and achieve that performance, then we would have a hard time achieving the support we need.

First, Coast Guard aviators fly in a domestic environment, which makes them perhaps more attuned to operations in congested areas. We have to be expert tacticians in both our mission areas and our mission environment.

Another difference is, when the alarm goes off, our young aircraft commanders adapt to the situations they face. They are given fairly broad doctrinal guidance, with well-developed TTPs, but they also are

But, from where I sit, I don’t see any problem in maintaining that support.

MaRINE CoRPs aVIaTION

Marine Corps Aviation Always Ready to Respond as Part of Expeditionary Force

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Our role as naval expeditionary forces is to be “most ready when the nation is least ready,” and this is due to the foresight of the 82nd Congress, which insisted upon forces forward deployed and ready to respond to crises before they became large contingencies. In 1952, that Congress determined that the Navy-Marine Corps team was the force of choice to perform this role. As that force of choice, Marines have responded from the sea in more than 110 interactions and contingencies in the last 20 years. The world is changing rapidly, but what America expects from its Navy-Marine Corps team has not changed.

What we expect from ourselves has also not changed: immediate, decisive action on and from the world’s oceans. Our Marine Corps

deploying forces go to sea as integrated Marine Air-Ground Task Forces, or “MAGTFs.” These agile and responsive forces stay afloat and ready. For example, early this year we took a 1,200-man infantry battalion off of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which was operating at sea, and sent them ashore in Afghanistan to join the more than 20,000 Marines supporting the multinational effort in Operation Enduring Freedom.

In the past two years Marines have fought in Afghanistan; fed refugeesinPakistanandevacuated over 10,000 people from the floods in that country; executed counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden; put Marines and sailors ashore in Japan and led the joint and interagency task force helping out after the earthquake and

U.S. Marine CorpS photo by Cpl. aaron d. hoStUtler

ne hundred years ago, Alfred A. Cunningham, our first Marine Corps aviator, said that Marine Corps aviation exists to “assist the troops on the ground to successfully carry out their missions.” Marine aviation’s number one priority now is the same as it was then: to support the ground force in winning our nation’s wars. We know that we must be prepared to operate across the range of military operations, and we will do this with systems and capabilities that maintain and strengthen our fundamental expeditionary character. tsunami; and conducted theater security cooperation operations from the Black Sea to Africa. All of these operations were enabled by Marine Corps aviation.

This spring, the Marines returned to the shores of Tripoli.

As the Arab Spring accelerated and the situation in Libya escalated, 26th MEU ships pulled into port, onloaded a Marine rifle battalion to replace the one which was ashore in Afghanistan, and then put back to sea offshore of North Africa, ready to respond should the need arise. And that need soon arose: Marine Corps AV-8B Harriers flew the first combat missions from aboard amphibious ships in the Mediterranean as part of NATO’s Operation Odyssey Dawn supporting rebel forces.

Sea-based Marine aviation also

rescued a downed U.S. Air Force pilot, flying a rescue package of MV-22B Ospreys and CH53E helicopters from the USS Kearsarge into Libya in the middle of the night to bring that pilot back to American ground.

To enable this strategic forward presence, all of Marine Corps aviation is expeditionary.

The equipment we use and the tactics we employ are focused on conducting operations in the littorals and beyond in harsh environments.

The Marine Corps has made significant advances in aviation technologies that support our mission set and make us a more agile and responsive seaborne force. The Marine Corps pioneered the battlefield use of the helicopter, and now is doing the same with

tiltrotor technology. The MV22B Osprey is the next step in the evolution of rotary lift and is now at the forefront of assault support capability. The Osprey completed three deployments to Iraq, is on its fourth deployment to Afghanistan, and is on its fourth aboard US Navy ships as part of the deployed Navy-Marine Corps team.

In the same way the Osprey revolutionizes assault support, the Joint Strike Fighter will revolutionize tactical air support of ground forces. The Marine Corps continues to use our rugged, proven helicopters and jets at sea and ashore, and we are breaking new ground with our family of unmanned aircraft systems.

All of this is tied together by a deployable command and control system, while our logistics from sea to shore enable our

expeditionary character.

President Theodore Roosevelt, in his second inaugural message to Congress in 1902, stated, “A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guaranty of peace.” More than a century later, Roosevelt’s quote still serves as fine advice. The nation has demanded our ready expeditionary Navy-Marine Corps aviation force for the past 100 years and will continue to demand that force into the future. We are always prepared, ready to assist in a humanitarian mission or fullscale combat, and everything in between. These are turbulent times, and a strong naval service is vitally important to the health and security of our nation. Your Navy-Marine Corps partnership is strong, and will remain strong as we look forward to the next century of success.

By MArINe LIeUteNANt GeNerAL terry G. roBLING, DePUty CoMMANDANt For AVIAtIoN

For More InForMatIon About this section: this special supplement was prepared for the advertising department of the Washington post by freelance journalist and editor Marcy Gessel in cooperation with the U.S. navy and the 100th anniversary of naval aviation foundation. the production of this supplement did not involve the news or editorial departments of the Washington post.

For more information, please contact: Marc h. rosenberg, Manager, Corporate and public policy advertising, at 202-334-7634.

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AN ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO THE WASHINGTON POST

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2011

A CENTURYOF SERVICE FROM TH FIRSTTO 5

GENERATION. © 2011 Lockheed Martin Corporation

For one hundred years, Naval Aviation has played a major role in the defense of freedom. And pushed the envelope of aviation technology. From the Curtiss biplane that performed the first takeoff and arrested landing aboard a ship to today’s state-of-the-art fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, Naval Aviators and support personnel have been at the tip of the spear. The men and women of Lockheed Martin are extraordinarily proud to be a part of the Naval Aviation team. As we celebrate the 100 th anniversary of Naval Aviation, we offer our heartfelt thanks and a resounding Bravo Zulu.

Photo courtsey of the U.S. Navy