Commodore's Corner

Unmanned Integration within the HSC Community

By CAPT Sean Rocheleau, Commodore, HSC Wing Pacific

Hello from Helicopter Sea Combat Wing Pacific (HSCWP). It is my privilege in this “Commodore’s Corner” to frame the present state of unmanned integration within our community, which operates the MQ-8 Fire Scout, as well as stimulate conversation toward the future. I say a conversation because unmanned operations will only continue to grow across our global Navy and DoD, which will demand constantly evolving and refining tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

The proverbial elephant in the room is the recent spate of mishaps involving both the MQ-8 Bravo and Charlie models of Fire Scout. While I cannot go into privileged information in this forum, there are areas that deserve scrutiny to include institutional integrity, communication, and ownership. These focus areas are foundational and serve to anchor this conversation during the forensic postmortem of mishap investigation.

What is institutional integrity, and how does it apply to our Fire Scout Program? In general terms, as defined by Georgetown University’s Dr. Carol Taylor, institutional integrity is a “strong ‘FIT’ between the system’s stated mission and decision making at all levels of the system.” Assumptions made as part of the original Fire Scout CONOPS, and several other unmanned systems, have since proven to be flawed and have thus led to a credible gap between capabilities resourced and what squadrons experience when operating Fire Scout. A great example of a flawed assumption is how simple MQ-8 would be to maintain and operate. The original CONOP likened unmanned operations to checking a book out from the library, placing little emphasis on resourcing live flight operations during the basic phase of readiness generation. Clearly, this approach has proven to be impractical. To remedy this situation, one of the first actions taken by the HSC Community, several years ago, involved properly resourcing live events at Point Mugu and Wallops Island for operational squadrons preparing to deploy. In this same vein, as we move forward with unmanned systems integration in the Navy, we must continually challenge previous assumptions and constraints to ensure they remain valid. This is critical, as every community within Naval Aviation will have some type of unmanned system, and many of our early CONOPS were established with little institutional knowledge of the complexities of operating these systems at sea. In fact, one of the most important weapon systems to the Air Wing of the Future (AWOTF) is MQ-25, which will enable longer range strikes. The knowledge we garner from lessons learned within our community from the Fire Scout Program, and externally through other services, will be key to more effectively integrating unmanned.

Former JCS Chairman, General Martin Dempsey, described communication using the analogy of an oak tree with a vast arrayed root structure, and the challenge of distance between root and very top of the tree. The “signal to noise ratio” experienced by senior leaders sometimes makes communication signals from the deck plate a challenge to be heard, with compounding factors such as the COVID 19 pandemic making effective comms more problematic. We must be on the lookout for even the faintest of communication signals from our Sailors. As leaders, all of us are required to message up the chain of command critical gaps we are experiencing that introduce risk to either mission or force. Examples that come to mind are training systems or software updates and how accurately they replicate Fire Scout mission systems. We need to be agile and move at the speed of software.

Finally, ownership is an anchor for process improvement. Casting blame is rearward looking and does not solve future issues. As lead Commodore for Fire Scout, I own the challenges and look forward to correcting the deficiencies we have discovered in the past several months. We should all embrace this leadership tenet to grapple with thorny issues, pushing the ones we cannot resolve ourselves up to the next higher echelon for resolution. The issues I am taking lead on are streamlining NATOPS, driving to a single T/M/S AVO, eliminating training simulator concurrency gaps, adding live flight events to the FRS, and most importantly, getting deployed flight hour generation on LCS to build experience and expand TTPs.

John E. Jackson’s One Nation Under Drones: Legality, Morality, and Utility of Unmanned Combat Systems (on the CNO’s professional reading list) describes how every unmanned program has had to work through various technical or training challenges while the programs were in their infancy. The MQ-1 Predator has had over 100 mishaps, since its inception in the early 2000s, as detailed by the Washington Post. We will move beyond and learn from these

mishaps, and Fire Scout will continue to grow in capability and performance. Both the CNO’s NAVPLAN 2021 and the recently published Navy Unmanned Campaign Plan speak of ubiquitous manned-unmanned teaming. As stated by CNO Gilday, “Unmanned Systems (UxS) have and will continue to play a key part in future Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), and there is a clear need to field affordable, lethal, scalable, and connected capabilities. That is why the Navy is expanding and developing a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), unmanned undersea vehicles (UUV), and unmanned surface vessels (USV) that will play key roles as we shift our focus toward smaller platforms that operate in a more dispersed manner. A hybrid Fleet will be necessary for the Navy to meet emerging security concerns. We need platforms to deliver lethal and non-lethal effects simultaneously in all domains across multiple axes. UxS will provide added capacity in our Future Fleet — in the air, on the surface, and under the water.”

Earlier this spring, the CNO visited HSCWP’s Vertical Takeoff and Landing Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Maintenance Detachment (VTUAV) at NAS Point Mugu. It was a great opportunity for HSC to highlight some of the advances to the manned-unmanned teaming efforts, demonstrating Naval Aviation’s alignment with CNO’s NAVPLAN 2021. We briefed and demonstrated MQ-8 and MH-60S current / future operations, confirming that these are very much aligned with his vision for a “larger hybrid Fleet.” We discussed the DMO capability that Fire Scout provides and touched on how this cost effective “unmanned platform (MQ-8) expands intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (ISR&T).” The visit went very well with a successful demonstration of MQ-8C’s use of the Minotaur mission management system, along with a followon engaging discussion on capabilities, future operations, and, most importantly, the integration of critical systems that cross multiple resource sponsors. Fire Scout is only one half of the equation. The multiple shipboard systems in LCS, that the air vehicle relies upon, are just as important as the air vehicle itself.

We brought CNO into the Mission Control Station (MCS) space and talked him through both the capabilities and procedures during a live flight event. Initially, the CNO thought it was a simulation, but engaged more fully once we explained the aerial vehicle was on range and the operators were controlling the aerial vehicle in real time. The CNO noted and was impressed with Minotaur and how it fused track correlation (i.e., AIS and radar contacts) with FLIR (BRITESTAR II). Interestingly, he also commented on the size of the MCS referring to them as bulky vice operating off a laptop. Additionally, he made note that “two humans” are operating “one aerial vehicle.” As a former Fleet CYBER Commander, there is probably nobody more aware of what can be accomplished in the realm of computing power, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The unmanned arena is ripe to leverage these promising technologies.

After the demo, we went on to discuss the MQ-8 / MH-60S efforts in 4th and 7th Fleets, and recent successful Airborne Use of Force operations to include seizure of millions of dollars of narcotics before they hit American soil, Oceania Maritime Security Initiative (OMSI), and the Freedom of Navigation (FON) operations in the South China Sea. Most recently with HSC-21, AMCM Detachments in the C7F AOR demonstrated cross Navy community manned-unmanned teaming with EOD Group 5’s MK-18 Mod 1.

In addition to the present operations with Fire Scout, we discussed Project Overmatch and some of the systems that would make Fire Scout even more useful to Fleet Commanders. For those not familiar with Overmatch, it is a future concept of networked warfare that, when coupled with precision fires, will garner our service the competitive edge we need. Some specific areas discussed were a passive targeting suite with digital ESM, beyond line-of-sight link, ASW buoy seeding and processing, and sense/see and avoid. These capabilities will result in significant ISR&T capabilities. What warship would not want a platform that can loiter at 10,000 feet for over five hours? To make this vision a reality, we must team across both Naval Aviation and Surface Warfare Communities to ensure we identify and fix the technical challenges of shipboard and air vehicle integration.

The work the Helicopter Sea Combat Community is doing with Fire Scout operations is critical to the NAE’s integration of unmanned. Each sortie flown, and hour logged, will continue to establish a foundation of knowledge and experience that will directly impact and buy down risk for MQ-25 and future systems. Additionally, we are quickly approaching all the critical / key decisions that will need to be made for the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) Family of Systems. What we learn from the unmanned surface combatant vantage point will be key to making “FVL Unmanned” the most capable platform for the next 20 to 40 years. One of the most challenging things we do as leaders is moving an organization through change. Bridging the future with manned-unmanned teaming is a transition that is most challenging and complex. Roll up your sleeves and let us continue this conversation for action to make unmanned integration a warfighting success!