Battleship UAVs

We tend to think of UAVs as new technology.  The Navy has visions of UAVs cruising out to leisurely circle over enemy forces and report targeting data back to undetected ships that will launch missiles to rain down on the hapless enemy.  Indeed, this is the heart of the distributed lethality concept. 

Setting aside the immense degree of fantasy, wishful thinking in that concept, it is interesting to recall that unmanned spotter aircraft are not all that new.  Just as the Navy used DASH drones for ASW decades ago, so too US Navy battleships (remember those?) used UAVs for gunfire spotting from the mid-1980’s through the mid-2000’s.  Of course, at that time the UAVs were referred to as Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPV).  The RPV of choice was the RQ-2 Pioneer.

RQ-2 Pioneer

As a reminder, the RQ-2 Pioneer was a mid-size, unmanned aircraft that was launched via rocket assist or a small catapult from the ship’s fantail and recovered using a net system.  It had an autopilot, inertial navigation, and 2-way C-band line-of-sight data link with a range limit of 100 nm.(4)  A common payload was the Wescam DS-12 EO/IR (Electro-Optical/Infrared) sensor. 

Battleship and RPV - A Lethal Combination

When not in use on the battleships, RPVs were disassembled and stored in steel ‘blast boxes’ aft of the Number 3 turret.(8)  The boxes were required to protect the units from the extreme over-pressure of the 16” guns.

Here are some specs on the Pioneer.

RQ-2 Pioneer UAV Specs (2)
Number built	175
Deployment	1986 – 2007
Endurance	5 hr
Range	100 nm
Payload	75 lb
Dimensions	14 ft long x 17 ft wingspan
Ceiling	15,000 ft
Speed	110 kts

The USS Iowa became the test bed for the RQ-2 Pioneer in December 1986.  Iowa experimented with RQ-2 Pioneer RPVs in 1987 exercises (Display Determination ’87) with Turkey and managed to surreptitiously launched an RPV in spite of Turkey’s objections to provide spotting support for a subsequent live fire event.(3)

RPV Launch

The Marines obtained Pioneer aircraft in 1987 and operated them from LHA amphibious ships as reconnaissance assets.  Reportedly, 5 Austin class LPDs were also equipped to operate Pioneers.(4)

Wisconsin and Missouri used their Pioneer RPVs to provide reconnaissance during the 1991 Desert Storm conflict and participated in the amphibious feint directed at the east coast of Kuwait.

After Missouri’s initial sustained shelling of the [Faylaka] island, Wisconsin sent its Pioneer buzzing over Iraqi heads in preparation for another barrage, during which Iraqi soldiers could be seen looking up blindly into the air waving makeshift white flags signaling their surrender.

It would be the first time an enemy surrendered to an unmanned vehicle and a testament as to how brutally powerful the Battleships’ main battery were, even in the modern era of so called “smart warfare.” (1)

During Wisconsin’s eight months in the Persian Gulf in support of Desert Storm, she accumulated 348 RPV flight hours.(1)  Including land based Marine units, Pioneers flew 533 sorties during Desert Storm.(5)  Another report states that 30 Pioneers flew 858 combat sorties (2781 hrs).(6)

RPV In Recovery Net

In 1998, Pioneer  accumulated more than 300 at-sea flight hours and was continuously deployed with cruises on USS Shreveport; USS Denver; USS Austin; and USS Cleveland.(7)

While the Pioneer RPVs were quite successful, the main takeaway from the Navy’s RPV experience is the operating environment and, unfortunately, this lesson has not been recognized.

Permissive Environment – It must be noted that the battleship’s RPVs were used in permissive environments without aerial or surface-to-air threats.  Thus, the RPVs were able to leisurely hover over the target areas.  This is the model the Navy seems to believe in today.  The Navy makes absolutely no allowance for enemy resistance.  Would we allow UAVs to leisurely circle over our forces, sending back spotting information?  Of course not!  So, why would the enemy allow us to do that?  They won’t!  Why then, are we so sure that slow, non-stealthy UAVs will be the backbone of our battlefield surveillance efforts?  It makes no sense.

We’ve seen that the Saudis and Israel and even Iran routinely shoot down UAVs.  Why do we think our UAVs will survive over a Chinese force?  They won’t!  In fact, our UAV lifespans will likely be measured in seconds or, on a good day, minutes.

Summary – So, what does all this tell us?  It tells us that unmanned spotter – or, more generally, surveillance – UAVs can be a very powerful tool but not as we plan to use them.  Loss rates under current planning will be near 100% and effectiveness, in terms of surveillance, will be near zero.  The successful counter to this is numbers and, to a lesser degree, stealth.  If we flood an area with more UAVs than the enemy can shoot down we’ll accomplish our surveillance objectives.  To do this requires cheap, expendable UAVs that can be thrown into battle in large numbers combined with a very robust master data assembly program that can put together the fragmentary bits of data that are received before each UAV dies.  The concept is described in this post: “PieceIt Together”.  Here’s a closely related post: “The Next Cruiser and Mini-Hawks”.  And:  “UAVs – Numbers Matter”.

This discussion should also suggest the need for a UAV carrier capable of operating hundreds of small UAVs and managing their communications and data.

An excellent exercise would be for the Navy to send their chosen UAVs to monitor an Army unit tasked with destroying the UAVs – a true live fire exercise.  Add in our best efforts at disrupting the UAV communications and we’d have an exercise that would tell us much about our UAV capabilities and our counter-UAV capabilities.

The Navy needs to get serious about determining the survivability and effectiveness of UAVs in a peer combat scenario before we commit them to war.  UAVs are the foundation of so many of our plans and yet we have no evidence to suggest that they are survivable or effective in combat.  In fact, operational experience strongly demonstrates that they are neither survivable nor effective.

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(1)“Battleships Pulled Off The Biggest Ruse Of Operation Desert Storm 25 Years Ago”, Tyler Rogoway, 20-Jan-2016,

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/battleships-pulled-off-the-biggest-ruse-of-operation-de-1754104974

(2)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAI_RQ-2_Pioneer

(3)https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/the-battleship-the-drone-and-the-chocolate-chip-cookies/

(4)http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app2/q-2.html

(5)https://olive-drab.com/idphoto/id_photos_uav_rq2.php

(6)http://www.unicraft.biz/on/pioneer/pioneer.htm

(7)https://web.archive.org/web/20070715081423/https://wrc.navair-rdte.navy.mil/warfighter_enc/aircraft/UAVs/pioneer.htm

(8)https://www.pearlharborhistoricsites.org/blog/they-called-them-rpv