The Navy’s unmanned tanker, the MQ-25, is supposed to be able to take off, fuel aircraft, and land, all autonomously. That’s quite an accomplishment and, if successful, adds a vital tanking capability without adding remote pilots or requiring complicated control communications schemes which would add to the burdens of a carrier rather than subtracting from them. It is the hands-off nature of the unmanned tanker that is appealing.
However, the latest rumblings from the Navy hint at a somewhat different story.
Boeing has successfully demonstrated for the first time the ability for the P-8A maritime patrol aircraft to take control of the MQ-25 Stingray drone mid-flight …
The event was a follow-up to a demonstration to one the company held last year which showed how the Stingray, the Navy’s new carrier-based, unmanned aerial tanker, could be controlled by an F/A-18 Super Hornet or E-2D Advanced Hawkeye pilot mid-flight while performing its core tanking mission.[1]
This is moving into dangerous territory. Is this suggesting that a supervisory aircraft will need to be present in order for the unmanned tanker to perform its task? That would be a very disappointing development – almost an overall negative for a carrier air wing that has few enough aircraft, as it is, and can ill afford to dedicate a control aircraft to babysit an unmanned tanker.
However, I think this suggesting that the Navy could, via an intermediary aircraft, take control of a tanker in order to issue new mission orders.
The value in pilots being able to task MQ-25s mid-flight lies within a core assumption the Navy — and more broadly the Pentagon — has about the future battlefield: all communications will be subject to attack. The shipboard controllers may not always have contact or permission to communicate with the MQ-25 depending on the situation. If that’s the case, then a pilot of a nearby manned aircraft may need to redirect the unmanned tanker without assistance from the ship.[1]
Of course, this raised the question, if the shipboard controller can’t communicate with the unmanned tanker due to enemy disruption of communications, why would we think that we’ll be able to communicate with the manned aircraft to tell the pilot to redirect the unmanned one? That’s a logical inconsistency. Military thinking just teems with this kind of logical inconsistency.
Here’s a bit of additional delusion and logical inconsistency:
“If you’re doing an ISR mission, you can be doing an ISR mission with this airplane [the unmanned tanker] 1,000 miles from the carrier,” he said. “You’re not going to be talking to the carrier to do that ISR mission. More than likely you might be talking to a P-8.”[1]
If you believe a large, slow, non-stealthy, broadcasting surveillance aircraft like the P-8 is going to survive to operate a thousand miles from a carrier, in enemy controlled/contested air and water, you’re deluding yourself. And, in a bit of logical inconsistency, if you can survivably operate a P-8 in the area then you don’t need an unmanned tanker/surveillance aircraft because the P-8 can do it.
This attempt to redirect and repurpose an unmanned tanker into other missions is typical of the Navy. Instead of developing a single function and getting it to work at an affordable price, the Navy is already attempting to add additional tasks and control schemes onto an as yet unproven aircraft. Common sense says to develop the main functionality first before moving on to others.
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[1]Breaking Defense website, “Boeing successfully demos MQ-25 control through P-8, autonomy software”, Justin Katz, 8-Sep-2022,
Who does ISR with a tanker? Why?
ReplyDeleteWe used to do ISR with a tanker off a carrier. EKA-3B
DeleteIt can be done, of course, but the problem is that ISR is a high risk mission and risking valuable tankers would rarely make sense.
DeleteThere is also the issue of payload. The MQ-25 has little or no usable payload capacity for sensors and any sensors would be extremely limited in power and/or field of view, thus making for a poor sensor platform. As far as I know, the only payload capacity would be the two hard points (podded sensors) and I don't know that the hard points are even wired for sensor interfacing. So, again, risking a high value aircraft for an ISR mission that it is not suited for makes little sense. Every tanker you lose also costs you a front line combat aircraft (the Hornet) because you now have to pull a Hornet off combat to fill in the tanker gap you created.
Now, if the aircraft were remanufactured with ISR specifically in mind, that might make sense, depending on what capabilities could be achieved.
Thats awful confusing. Im not even sure that using the MQ for the actual ISR was what was meant. Maybe the MQ was meant to support, say, F-35s doing the ISR(??) Thatd make more sense, although throwing the P-8 into the conversation muddles it even further...
ReplyDeleteMaybe whats being said is that the MQ can have its flight plan altered more locally- which could be a good thing if a recon flight finds enemy forces nearby where they werent expected?? Although in that case, mentioning F-18s, P-8/E-2s, and not F-35s makes me wonder why being able to do local MQ reprogramming wont be an acriss the board option/capability??
DeleteSounds to me that the team responsible for the MQ is paying a lot more attention to the issues with a single-pilot controller aircraft and workload than the Loyal Wingman team are. This sounds like a real nightmare to dump it on a single pilot aircraft.
Delete"Thats awful confusing."
DeleteReread the quotes in the post. It's absolutely clear that they're talking about redirecting the MQ-25 using other aircraft (P-8, for example) as comm relays.
"Sounds to me that the team responsible for the MQ is paying a lot more attention to the issues with a single-pilot controller aircraft and workload than the Loyal Wingman team are."
DeleteNo. You're trying to read something into it that isn't there. The article quite clearly states that comm issues FROM THE CARRIER, would be why a local control aircraft would be needed to redirect/repurpose the MQ-25. In the normal course of tanking, there is not supposed to be a local control aircraft. It's supposed to be 100% autonomous ... unless the concept is changing to local, direct control to accommodate mission creep, which is my fear.
MQ doing ISR was always part of the mission assumptions from the beginning of the programs. Basically, can take the same airframe and put ELINT pods instead of refuel pods.
DeleteHaving a tanker do ISR is certainly possible. However, how often is it going to happen? What commander is going to risk critical, irreplaceable tankers doing high risk ISR that it can't even do well since it's not designed for it? If all we're talking about is hanging a sensor pod of some sort from a hard point (ignoring electrical interface and comm issues) then it makes far more sense to do so from an F-35 which, at least, has a much better chance of survival.
DeleteThis is a case of pursuing technology for its own sake instead of understanding the realities of combat operations and recognizing the absolutely irreplaceable nature of a tanker and the impact that the loss of one would have on future carrier ops.
MQ-25 was designed to do ISR as well. It was part of the design requirements. The design was based around filling both an ISR and a tanker role.
Delete"ISR"
DeleteThat was discussed during concept development but I'm unclear as to what extent, if any, it was implemented in the design. From a 2016 Breaking Defense article,
"The tanker would have some capabilities to relay communications and perhaps conduct reconnaissance"
That's far from a definitive statement. I have not read of any specific, designed-in ISR capabilities. Maybe you have a reference to definitive ISR capabilities?
The design is the same as Boeing's UCLASS design which had ISR as a baseline requirement.
DeleteIn addition: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30145/u-s-intelligence-agency-eyes-the-navys-mq-25-drone-for-maritime-surveillance-missions
"The design is the same as Boeing's UCLASS design"
DeleteAh, the Boeing UCLASS was a derivative of the Boeing Phantom Ray which was a flying wing design - nothing like the MQ-25.
Regardless of what the design was based on, I'm unaware of any specific ISR additions/modifications to the MQ-25 to accommodate ISR. If you know of any, I'd like to see a link to details about ISR-specific electrical interfaces, physical connections, payload connections, on-board data processing, ISR communications (signal processing, bandwidth, image formatting, etc.), weight allowances, etc.
Lacking that, I can only conclude that there are no ISR-specific accommodations.
ISR was discussed, on occasion, during the concept phase of the MQ-25 but I'm unaware that anything was implemented.
Directly from NAVAIR "MQ-25 is currently in flight test, gaining valuable early insight from the contractor-owned MQ-25 predecessor, T1".
Delete"T-1" is Boeing's self-funded UCLASS prototype. It was called "Phantom Banshee", built in less than a year (340 days) and was secretly rolled out in Dec 2014 (which would have aligned with the final UCLASS RFP release).
Boeing UCLASS was NOT a derivative of X-45 Phantom Ray. Boeing's UCLASS has been flying around since 2019 masquerading as a tanker.
Understood and agree that theyre talking about local rediredtion of the MQ by other aircraft. Just not sure if theyre suggesting that the MQ is doing the ISR, or if its doing tanker support of other aircraft that are performing ISR.
ReplyDeleteTo clear up your confusion, here's another quote from the referenced article that wasn't reproduced in the post:
Delete“A Boeing-led team virtually demonstrated how other aircraft can use MQ-25’s architecture and task it to conduct tanking and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions — all within the mission airspace and without traditional communications with the ship-based ground control station,”
They're clearly talking about using the MQ-25 to conduct ISR. Glad we got that straight.
If the refueling drone can be redirected by a friendly aircraft, then it's not impossible for it to be hacked by the enemy.
ReplyDeleteThe enemy redirecting that thing into the side of a carrier would make for an exciting Tuesday afternoon.
Why not just bring back the S-3 Vikings for tankers (and fixed wing ASW) and dispense with all this BS?
Lutefisk
My reading suggests that there is a weakness in the S-3 for part of the tanking mission. Tankers in the Navy have at least two separate missions:
Delete(1) Mission tanking, where the tanker flies with the strike package to refuel the strike partway along the way.
(2) Recovery tanking, where the tanker stays near the carrier to refuel planes late in the mission, for example if they have to get waved off from landing.
The S-3 is nearly perfect for the recovery tanking mission, but is too slow for the mission tanking mission. It can't keep up with the strike package. I'm sure there are workarounds, for example by giving the S-3 a head start. But still ....
"giving the S-3 a head start"
DeleteOf course. I'm not aware of tankers ever flying with a strike. It's probably happened sometime in history but it's not the norm. Just like oilers don't normally sail with a task force but, instead, meet them somewhere.
The Drive website, among many other naval analysts, discussed the concept of even today reviving the S-3 tanker concept. They had this to say,
Delete"In total, this KS-3 Viking derivative would be able to carry a whopping 30,000lbs of gas—and possibly more today if further modifications were made. The current requirement for the Navy's MQ-25 drone is to be able to fly out to 500 miles and offload 14,000lbs of gas and then safely return to the carrier. "
Usually, tankers won't flight to front line but stay in relatively safe zones. Manned or unmanned, tankers can be easily shoot down.
ReplyDeleteThey are usually behind fighter jets. If Navy cannot maintain integrality of communications in these zones, then, this technological problem is fatal. Military R&D needs to solve it.
Since Navy wants carrier-based tankers, large manned tankers are not suitable.
Except when you want to maintain none/low emission states... both the carriers and strike packages are capable of taking off, forming, and traveling with minimal to no communication. By enabling both local and third party control, this allow maintenance of the low/no emission state.
DeleteThere is an assumption being made that the P-8 is close to the MQ, which isn't required and is the primary reason you would want something like a P-8 doing it. At distance, both the LOS and signal strength required to communicate with the MQ drone could be complicated, esp when operating in a none or low emission state. being able to hand off C&C to platforms at high altitude makes sense tactically.
ReplyDeleteThe P-8 could be both several hundred miles outside of enemy range and the carrier, communicating with a MQ-25 that is near or in adversary airspace doing intel gathering.
As far as foreign control, the C&C links will obviously be cryptographically keyed.
The Navy is assuming that they'll lose comms. Here's the quote from the post/article:
Delete"a core assumption the Navy — and more broadly the Pentagon — has about the future battlefield: all communications will be subject to attack.:
If the Navy is anticipating electronic attacks sufficient to hinder comms to the point that they can't communicate with a UAV then how/why would they/you assume that a P-8 will have no problem? The way the P-8 can communicate is by closer physical proximity. What that exact distance is, I don't know.
As noted in the post, if a carrier can't communicate with a UAV, how will they communicate with a P-8 (or other aircraft) to tell it to redirect the UAV? That's a logical inconsistency in the Navy's thinking.
good points, but in order to cut comms across a vast ocean, you'd need multiple resources to be transmitting out in order to jam, which all radiate their own positions, which Jassm-er and soon JASSM-X can reach. Frankly it would be better, and more realistic, that the enemy passively listen and then target detected aircraft with jamming or missiles. Kind of reminds one of the games wild weasels had to play, radiate and potentially die or kill the other guy. Either way, the P8 can be potentially safe, but the tanker is going to die, it's just not a recon bird in contested areas. In an era where the air force has already made very stealthy drones, the Navy is better off biting the bullet and buying something specific to the task similar to the rq-170 or 180 (rq-4 they bought is not survivable either once it gets within 200 miles of enemy and it would need to be within 240 miles). Either way, these tankers are going to be needed to tank, there is not enough of them planned to start with (taking the s3 vast fleet in the desert with alot of life left in them and making them primarily tankers would have been a better choice in my humble opinion with budget decisions the Navy has in front of them, the S3's are paid for and could be made unmanned as well).
DeleteThe unicorn of the "crewless aircraft" has been around for a long time. Back in the mid-70's, when drones were first being conceptualized for carrier warfare, the dream was that the super-carrier force, being of insufficient number to effectively counter the USSR on a global scale, could be bolstered by a large number of small "escort" carriers, something under 30,000 tons, equipped with approximately 75 attack drones each. This was in the heady days of the 600+ ship Navy dream. The heart of the plan was the obsolescence of aircrews. Aircraft without crews, and all of their attendant equipment requirements and personnel (or personal) issues, are much lighter and smaller hence the smaller platform, which also requires fewer human amenities. There were all sorts of schemes of how to make this work that evolved over the years as the technology evolved until we arrive at nearly fully autonomous aircraft such as the MQ-25, which will the test of the core concept. I review this history because keeping in mind that the entire exercise is, and always has been, the removal of aircrews from aircraft and all of the attendant managerial advantages to that; those being, but not limited to acft weight, size, radar profile, and more importantly crew training, support, fatigue, and morale. Keep this in mind when talking about the concept of a KS-3. If anything the crewless imperative has only increased through the decades.
ReplyDeleteIn 2015 it was proposed to bring back a dozen or so S-3's in their original ASW role. It was estimated it would take four years to return them to service. It is a pretty safe bet that to re-engineer them into KS-3's would require a longer timeline. A KS-3 would be nearly a hundred knots faster than the MQ-25, but speed usually converts to fuel consumption and since both launch with approx 29,000 pounds of fuel on board the question then becomes, is it worthwhile to wait at least 5 to 10 years while the S-3 airframes, most of which are already at half their potential life-cycle or more, are refurbished, converted to a tanker configuration, then engineer jiu-jitsued to accommodate cutting edge 21st century technology that will still need to go through the same on-deck operational birthing pains, after recertification, as a brand new airframe that is already certified, does not have the reflective signature of a barn door, and that may have more "give" once on station. I think if the speed advantage was important it would have been calculated into the MQ design parameters.
"In total, this KS-3 Viking derivative would be able to carry a whopping 30,000lbs of gas—and possibly more today if further modifications were made. The current requirement for the Navy's MQ-25 drone is to be able to fly out to 500 miles and offload 14,000lbs of gas and then safely return to the carrier. "
As I note above they both launch with approximately 29,000 lbs of fuel on board. I can't find figures for fuel consumption for an S-3 so what its give would be at 500nm is beyond my capacity, but I did once see an attempt at using a F-8U as a tanker. Just once. What one launches with and what's available on station are two very different things. Also the 29,000 lbs fuel load will put the gross weight of the aircraft at the absolute design limits of the airframe, unless we're willing to take another five to ten years to completely redesign it from the rivet heads in ("further modifications" - maybe there are a couple of retired LTV engineers still alive that can help). As a gauge of what we're talking about most of the designing of the S-3 was done with slide rules. The time from the first flight of the P-38 to the first flight of the S-3 33 years: from the first S-3 flight to the first flight of the MQ-25 47 years.
As to the IRS controversy I have little to contribute. Never was anywhere where mission creep didn't happen, but I will say I'm guessing that an MQ-25 would be a cheaper loss, tactically, than an F-35 or a P-8, or just about anything else that fly's. Tankers are an auxiliary asset. Important assets, but auxiliary none the less. I imagine them being used for routine, low risk, situations in order to reduce pilot fatigue. That being said, unrefueled F/18's and F-35's have approximately half the range of the ChiCom DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, hence the 500 mile to station and back requirement. Tankers will be part of strike formations.
DeleteI'm surprised that no one has brought up the most obvious reason for the necessity to "capture" and reassign a MQ-25 by someone in the neighborhood, i.e. it's parent carrier no longer exists.
"both launch with approximately 29,000 lbs of fuel on board."
DeleteDo you have a reference for that? I've been unable to find any actual spec on fuel capacity of the MQ-25. The aircraft empty weight is listed as 14,000 lb and the max takeoff weight is 44,000 lb. The difference of 30,000 lb would be the theoretical max fuel capacity but a portion of that weight allowance is due to pods, tanks, refueling apparatus, etc. Further, I suspect the max takeoff weight is for a land take off rather than a catapult launch. Aircraft rarely launch at max weight from a catapult.
Navair does not list a MQ-25 fuel capacity which makes me suspicious of any claimed specification.
If you have an authoritative source for the MQ-25 fuel capacity I'd love to see it !
"It is a pretty safe bet that to re-engineer them into KS-3's would require a longer timeline."
DeleteI feel like you're overstating the difficulties in converting an S-3 to a KS-3. The S-3 frequently operated as a tanker using external pods. The main KS-3 modification would have been converting the bomb bay to fuel carry - not exactly a hugely challenging modification.
In fact, Lockheed actually converted an S-3 test aircraft into a KS-3 in short order and flew it for a couple of years demonstrating its refueling capabilities.
"I can't find figures for fuel consumption for an S-3"
Here's a quote from a Drive website article giving S-3 fuel consumption for the refueling mission:
By our calculations, an S-3 burns roughly 1,600lbs an hour at cruise. It would take roughly 1.5 hours to reach its station and the same time on the return trip. That is 4,800lbs of gas. Add in an hour of loiter time and margin for launch and recovery, and that totals around 7,000lbs just as a rough estimate. Add an extra 1,000lbs for good measure. That leaves 22,000lbs of fuel to offer to its 'customer' aircraft.
Here's the reference: "S-3 Tanker"
Page 12 (KPP 2)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Selected_Acquisition_Reports/FY_2019_SARS/20-F-0568_DOC_62_MQ-25_SAR_Dec_2019_Full.pdf
Yes, this lists the commonly cited threshold of 14,000 lb at 500 nm. Nothing new there.
DeleteOf course, this raised the question, if the shipboard controller can’t communicate with the unmanned tanker due to enemy disruption of communications, why would we think that we’ll be able to communicate with the manned aircraft to tell the pilot to redirect the unmanned one?
ReplyDeleteIt is not unusual to control an aircraft from another aerial platfrom rather than carrier itself. From the 1970s, the tomcats and other aerial unit's mission control are mainly relies on in-air E-2s and the CVBG will stay in EMCON,any RF from carrier itself will increase the risk of showing the location to enermy ELINT platfrom. And it is the same way on how to control the MQ-25s, I am glad to see navy didn't forget what they learned from coldwar.
You've misunderstood the issue. The issue is how to re-task the unmanned aircraft, not how to control it. The UAV doesn't need control; it only needs tasking. The issue is what happens when the carrier wants to re-task the UAV and can't due to attacks on its comms? The Navy's 'solution' is for a nearby aircraft to re-task the UAV but is where the logical disconnect arises. If the carrier can't directly re-task the UAV why would they be able to communicate with another aircraft near the UAV?
DeleteWell, what I said "control" is the same meaning of tasking. Back to topic, beacuse the air control/re-tasking is not always come from the carrier itself, like I said, from coldwar the task assignment will mainly come from a in-air E-2 while CVBG will stay EWCOM to decase the risk of location exposing. There are high level officer onboard E-2 or P-8, so it can making decisions.
Delete