How To Build A Better Aircraft

As we discuss terminating the F-35 and why it’s a good/bad idea, I continue to hear the notion that we have no choice but to continue because stopping and designing a new aircraft would take too long and cost even more than the F-35.  Given today’s badly broken military development and acquisition practices, that is undoubtedly true.  However, it doesn’t have to be.  In previous posts and comments, I’ve described how to design a new aircraft, put it into production in five years, and do it for less than we’re paying now.  I’d like to pull all those comments and posts together into one post.

Here’s how to build a better aircraft.

To begin, we have to define what we even need in broad terms.

The first key recognition is that there are two main “theaters” of operation for aircraft:  Europe/land masses and the Pacific/oceanic region.  All other likely regions of conflict (Iran, North Korea, Africa) are subsets.  This recognition immediately leads us to the second recognition.

The second recognition is that a new aircraft must not be a multi-service aircraft.  The F-35 has proven the folly of this approach.  The requirements for a European/land mass aircraft will be radically different than for a Pacific/oceanic aircraft.

See?  We’ve already saved money by not trying to build a gargantuan, one-size fits all aircraft!

Being a naval matters blog, this post will now discuss only the Pacific/oceanic aircraft.  The Air Force can design their own European/land mass aircraft.

The third recognition is that the aircraft will perform one main role and only one.  Focus is the key.  Secondary functions are fine as long as they don’t impact the primary function or contribute more than 2% to the cost.  Thus, a fighter that has a mechanism to carry and release a bomb is fine as long as the capability in no way negatively impacts the main role of being a fighter.

See?  We’ve saved money by not trying to make our aircraft a combination strike, fighter, AEW, ISR, EW, tanker, drone controller, arsenal aircraft all rolled into one.

The fourth recognition, closely tied to the third, is that focus comes from a coherent, well thought out concept of operations (CONOPS).  This will tell us exactly what our aircraft requirements are.  Note that I’m not going to offer what I think the aircraft should be/do.  That would just bog us down in technical specifics that are irrelevant to this discussion.  Besides, if you’ve followed the blog, you already know what kind of role I think Navy air should play.

So, we’ve now got a clearly defined aircraft with a very specific and narrow functional role.  At this point, our aircraft program breaks down into two major sections:  technical and program management.

Technical Aspects

Airframe.  Choose an existing airframe.  There are many to choose from.  There are all different wing shapes and sizes, there are stealthy and semi-stealthy airframes.  There are single engine and multi-engine.  And so on.  The point is to pick an existing, proven, debugged airframe, if at all possible.  I suspect the F-22 airframe is a pretty good choice.  Maybe not perfect but perfect is the enemy of affordable.

See?  We’ve saved a gazillion dollars in basic airframe developmental costs by simply using an existing airframe!

Technology.  Choose the most advanced existing, proven technologies for sensors, engines, and weapons.  If it isn’t already in operation somewhere in the world, then it belongs in Research & Development and not on our aircraft.  With only existing technology, we eliminate development altogether and only have to deal with packaging of the items into the airframe and integration through the software.

See?  We just saved a boat load of money by completely eliminating technology developmental costs.

Complexity.  Don’t make it unnecessarily complicated.  The F-35 “do everything” ALIS maintenance, inventory, logistics, and mission planning software is needless complication and is racking up huge costs.  We don’t need sensor fusion unless there’s an existing, debugged, proven software package already out there.  We just need a basic “sense and shoot” level of complexity.

See?  We’ve just saved a bundle of money by keeping everything simple.  KISS is alive and well.

Management Aspects

Design.  Production cannot start until the entire design is 100% complete.

See?  We just saved a ton of money by completely eliminating concurrency costs.

Change Orders.  Design modifications are the enemy of affordable – affordable has a lot of enemies, doesn’t it?  We’ll establish our requirements from the CONOPS, embed them in concrete, embed the concrete in titanium, and not change a single, tiny item.  The inevitable changes can come down the road in the form of upgrades, after the aircraft is in service.

See?  We’ve just saved a ton of money by completely eliminating change orders, alterations, and concurrency costs.

Managers.  Program managers must be appointed for the duration of the program until the aircraft is in full production.  To do less is to lose accountability.  Managers must be held accountable.  If the program misses schedules, runs over budget, or otherwise fails, the managers must pay the price in the form of loss of pay, loss of benefits, possible court martial, and automatic discharge from the service.  This may seem severe but it’s exactly what private industry does with their managers.  Besides, would we really want to retain in service a manager who demonstrates that they can’t successfully manage a program?  Now, the flip side of accountability must also be applied.  If the program comes in on time or early, on or under budget, and meets all technical specifications then the managers should be given significant bonuses, raises, benefits, and promotions.  Together, the threat of punishment and the promise of reward are as powerful a motivational tool as we can provide.

Authority.  Hand in hand with this degree of accountability goes authority.  If we’re going to hold managers accountable to this degree, they need the power and authority to execute their program as they see fit.  Once we commit to a program, no one but the program manager can make decisions about the schedules, funding uses, technical issues, etc.  Yes, there are statutory requirements and milestones that must be met and which are decided by other people but all the program specifics must be under the control of the manager.  No more can some outside Admiral insert his pet feature into a program.  No more can outside forces impose schedule adjustments.  And so on.

Decision Point.  A death point is necessary.  A death point is a go or no go decision point and comes at the 2 year point in a program.  At that point, any competent program manager will know whether the project is viable.  If it isn’t, then we terminate with no further expenditures and no penalty for the manager.  If it is viable, we proceed as described.  Only the program manager can make the go decision.  Thus, he can’t be forced into moving ahead with a project that isn’t viable.  Conversely, the program manager or any outside person or agency with sufficient authority can make the no go decision.  This allows outside agents to terminate the program due to budget, changes in strategic or operational need, or any other reason.

Conflict of Interest.  Employment restrictions will forbid the project manager from ever working for a company that had anything to do with the project.  This eliminates any conflict of interest, delayed bribery/kickbacks, etc.

Contract.  A fixed price contract with cost reduction incentives will be the only type of contract allowed.  With the iron-clad, unchangeable specifications we’ll use, there will be absolutely no unknowns for industry and, therefore, no reason to need any kind of squishy, cost-plus contract.  There will be no separate contracts for multiple lots of aircraft.  There will be only one aircraft and one lot.  The last aircraft built will be absolutely identical to the first.

A side effect of this policy might be that instead of committing to production quantities of thousands, which inevitably get cut to hundreds, perhaps we’ll scale down our production programs to more reasonable quantities that can actually be built.

The entire quantity of aircraft will be specified in the contract.  The contract will specify that the manufacturer gets paid the full contract amount whether the government terminates or reduces the aircraft quantity or not.  Thus, there is no risk for the manufacturer and, therefore, no reason not to accept a fixed price contract.

So, let’s sum up, shall we?

Timing.  We’ve completely eliminated development, leaving only packaging and integration.  Requirements will be unchangeable.  All technology will already exist.  With all that in mind, there is no reason we can’t begin production within 5 years, quite likely less.

Cost.  I’ve noted many instances of huge cost savings.  With no development, existing technology, an existing airframe, and no modifications, there is no reason we can’t build the cheapest aircraft in modern history and cheaper by a huge amount, too!

The interesting thing about this concept is that the vast majority of it could be implemented by the Navy with nothing more than internal policy changes.  Yes, there would be a few aspects that might require legislative involvement but those are relatively minor, actually.

Note:  I don’t want a single comment telling me why this can’t be done under the current reality.  I know it can’t be done under the current reality.  This blog is partly about describing current conditions but also, partly, about describing the way things should be.  This post is one of the “should be” ones.  Let’s treat it as such.

And there you have it.  If we dropped the F-35 today, we could have a fully developed, fully combat capable, state of the art aircraft in production within five years and for a fraction of the cost of the F-35.

That’s how you build a better aircraft.

Time Stands Still

Time Stands Still !

We have witnessed phenomenal advances in military technology since WWII.

• Aircraft are jet powered and can now supercruise at Mach+ speeds.
• Weapons can now be precisely guided by lasers.
• Missiles can home in on their targets using a variety of technologies.
• Radar can see a mosquito at 200 nm.
• Stealth ships and aircraft can evade radar.
• Cruise missiles can travel a thousand miles and hit a pinpoint target.
• Infrared sensors allow us to see in the dark.
• Shaped charge warheads can achieve amazing penetrations.
• Sensors and weapons can be networked to achieve leaps in efficiency.
• And so on …

The advances in military technology are absolutely stunning.  Most impressive is the fact that the advances have been steady and show no sign of abating.  Not a decade has gone by in aircraft, weapons, and sensor development that has not seen a significant leap in technology.  We can now realistically envision lasers and rail guns.  Star Wars is just around the corner.

As an example, just consider the advances in ship’s armor since WWII.  We’ve developed … uh … new, uh … Boy, I’m drawing a blank on any new advance in ship’s armor.  But, that aside, our ships are now constructed with steel plate that is markedly stronger than … no, wait … Now that I think about it, ship’s plate is actually thinner and weaker than standard WWII hull plating.  I guess we’ve actually gone backward a bit.  Can that be?

It would appear that naval armor development has been mired in a time warp where time has stopped.

Hang on.  Let me make a quick call to the Navy’s engineers.   ………..

Well, that just confirmed it.  I asked them what year it is and they said 1946.  That explains the utter lack of progress in naval armor.

It’s funny.  When we discuss aircraft, weapons, and sensors, it’s always in the future tense.  This next generation of aircraft will have weapons that …  and sensors that will …

But, when we talk about naval armor, it’s always in the past tense.  A WWII battleship can’t stop a cruise missile.  A modern ship can’t carry the weight of WWII armor - proven false in a previous post but it illustrates how we reference armor.  Armor, even WWII armor, can’t stop torpedoes. 

Why don’t we discuss armor in the future tense.  Why don’t we say, this next frigate will have armor that … ?  It’s because there have been no advances and, therefore, we have no expectation of any advances.  We all read the news and we know that no one is even working on armor development. 

Why is that?  Why is no one working on armor development?  Is there something inherent to armor that makes it immune to scientific advancement?

Land vehicle armor has made advances.  Not as much as aircraft, weapons, and sensors but still significant advances.  Chobham ceramic armor lead the way.  We now have layered armor, composite armor, V-shaped armor, perforated armor, spall liners, reactive armor, and probably a bunch of other armors that I don’t know about because I’m not a land warfare expert or because they’re classified.  Why has no one tried to adapt any of these armor technologies to ships?  Why has no one made any effort to develop new naval armor?

Sure, some of these armor technologies may not be suitable for ships but have you even heard of a failed attempt to adapt land armor to ships?  The only adaptation of land armor that I’m aware of is Kevlar linings for use as anti-splinter protection so this can only marginally be considered armor and certainly not in the sense that we’re talking about here.  I am an expert on naval matters and I keep a close eye on naval technology and I can’t recall a single report of any naval armor research, successful or not, in modern times.

Why has the Navy totally abandoned armor research?  And why have we, the observers and commenters, accepted it?  None of us question why a Burke, the most advanced and powerful surface ship on the planet, costing over $2B, has almost no armor and thinner, weaker hull plating than a WWII Fletcher? 

Something is seriously wrong with this picture!

Break Up The Burkes

The Burke class destroyers are considered a marvel of modern engineering and have set the bar for all subsequent naval warship design and construction – at least, that’s the opinion of many.  The reality is that the Navy’s warship design has gotten so bad that we now consider a Burke to be “good”.  That’s lowering the bar, not setting it.

Consider, if a WWII ship designer had proposed building a cruiser size ship, which is what a Burke is, with no armor, thinner than normal hull and deck plating, and weaker than normal steel, he’d have been tossed out on his rear end and yet today we consider the Burke to be the gold standard of shipbuilding! 

This, however, is not the point of this post.  I covered that bit of historical comparison merely to set the stage for the main premise by pointing out that the Burkes are not the gold standard – they are, pathetically, the best of the worst in terms of warship design and construction.  With that in mind, we have now disposed of the fiction that the Burkes are a good design and we can move on to consideration of a better design.

To further set the stage, we all recognize the death spiral that the Navy is in.  As we try to make each ship more and more multi-functional, the ships become bigger and more expensive.  Because they are more expensive we can’t afford as many and numbers get cut.  As numbers decrease, unit costs increase and we try to compensate by making each ship even more capable and more multi-functional which further drives up the cost which further reduces the numbers which means we have to put more capability on each ship which drives up the cost which cuts numbers which … 

Ridiculously optimistic (and unfunded) projections of fleet sizes of 355 ships notwithstanding, the reality is that our combat fleet has been steadily shrinking in numbers for the last few decades and that trend shows no signs of stopping.  We have submarine and destroyer shortfalls programmed into our 30 year shipbuilding plan which, itself, is fictionally optimistic!  Our carrier fleet is steadily shrinking.  We’re down to 10 carriers and only 9 air wings.  Our logistics support and replenishment fleet is vanishing.  Our mine countermeasures ships and aircraft are nearly non-existent.  And so on.

How can we break out of this death spiral before we reach a fleet of one mega-ship?  How can we design better warships?  How are those two questions possibly related?

The answer, or at least a major portion of the answer, is the Burke.  The Burke is a poor design which is symptomatic of all that we just discussed.  It is a $2B+ (likely $3B+ for the Flt III) ship that has been designed to perform anti-air warfare (AAW), anti-surface warfare (ASuW), long range cruise missile strike, anti-submarine warfare (ASW), helo-based aviation support operations, and a host of other functions.  Thus, the Burke has lots of capabilities which makes it a flexible and powerful vessel, according to proponents.  The reality is that the very range of capabilities makes the ship of limited use. 

If the Burke is to perform AAW escort for a carrier or amphibious group then, by definition, it can’t go sailing off to perform ASW twenty or thirty miles away.  Thus, the ASW is useless.  Conversely, if the ship is performing ASW twenty or thirty miles away, it can’t provide AAW protection to a group.  Thus, the AAW is useless.  This is a long winded way of saying that one ship can’t be in two places at the same time.

Further, do you really want a $2B+ ship playing tag with a diesel-electric SSK which has all the advantages?  Do you really want to risk the most capable AAW ship in the fleet (along with the Ticonderogas which the Navy is desperately trying to early retire) to be taken away from AAW escort duties to play submarine tag and run the significant risk of being sunk?

What makes the Burke “flexible”?  In large measure, it’s the vertical launch system (VLS) which allows the ship to mix loads of Standard, ESSM, Tomahawk, and ASROC missiles.  The problem is that the more multi-purpose and flexible you make the loadout, the less capable the ship becomes in any one area.  For instance, if you opt to load 50 Tomahawks, you reduce the AAW VLS capacity to only 46 cells.  We see, then, that flexibility comes at a severe price.

So, again, how does all this relate to our death spiral solution?

The answer is to break up the Burkes.  We need to stop building multi-functional, uber destroyers and return the days when we built ships for a single specific purpose.  That’s not to say that a ship couldn’t perform multiple missions but each ship design had a clear, primary function that it was optimally designed for.

We had ASW destroyer escorts.  We had anti-ship destroyers.  We had escort cruisers.  We had strike (surface and land) battleships that also happened to be outstanding AAW escorts.  And so on.

Let’s list the Burkes main functions again.

• AAW escort
• Ballistic Missile Defense
• ASW
• ASuW
• Long Range Strike

What would happen if we broke those functions out and allocated them to individual ships?  Here’s the separate ships/functions that would result.

AAW Escort – High value ships require dedicated AAW escorts and that’s what this ship is.  It’s a Burke minus the hanger, flight deck, ASW outfit, and cruise missile capacity.  It’s an Aegis equipped AAW barge that is “tethered” to the ships it escorts.  With no need for extra VLS cells devoted to cruise missiles, the entire VLS load is surface to air missiles (Standards and ESSM) which means we don’t need as many cells.  Burkes have 96 cells but a third or so are typically devoted to Tomahawks.  That means we can build a dedicated AAW escort with only around 60 cells and still match the Burke’s AAW capacity!

Cost.  If we take away the flight deck, hangar, and reduce the VLS capacity to around 60, we should be able to shorten the ship by around 30%.  That will make a significant cost savings.  Eliminating the ASW fit, hull mounted sonar, towed array, and torpedo tubes should save additional significant money.  Finally, the various reductions combined with the deleted helo pilots and maintenance personnel will significantly reduce the size of the crew and the associated berthing, galley space, food and water storage, waste management, and other hotel services which, in turn, further reduces the size of the ship.  Let’s put the crew size at 170 versus the standard Burke crew size of 270 or so.

Conceptually, this ship is akin to the WWII Atlanta class anti-aircraft CLAA.

Atlanta Class Anti-Aircraft CLAA

Cost.  Considering all the reductions, I’m going to put the cost of this ship at $1.1B versus the nominal $2B cost of a standard Burke.  The bulk of the cost is the Aegis/AMDR sensor fit.

ASW Escort – This ship must be cheap enough to be acquired in numbers and cheap enough to be considered expendable since ASW is a high risk mission and we’ll lose a number of these. 

Buckley Class DE

The ship will be optimized for ASW with acoustic isolation of all internal machinery, multi-frequency hull mounted sonar, towed array, variable depth sonar, Hedgehog/RBU, flight deck and hangar for two helos, ASROC launched from either the old Mk112 deck launcher or an 8-cell VLS (I’ll leave it to naval engineers to decide which is preferred – I’m thinking the old Mk112).  Additional capabilities will be short range AAW in the form of SeaRAM/CIWS and a Mk 110 57 mm gun.  Radar will be a TRS-3D or equivalent.  The ship will be around 300 ft long or less, if possible, although the flight deck/hangar probably dictates 300 ft.

Conceptually, this ship is a combination of the WWII Buckley class destroyer escort and the Spruance class ASW destroyer.

Cost.  The ship is significantly smaller than the Freedom class LCS and does not waste space on expansive flight decks or worthless high speed engineering plants.  Thus, the cost should be less than an LCS.  I’ll put the cost at $350M.

ASuW / Land Attack – This ship is a Burke without the AAW fit and somewhat fits the generic destroyer classification.  It has only a medium/short range AAW (ESSM/SeaRAM/CIWS).  Additional VLS cells carry Tomahawk cruise missiles and ASROC.  Let’s call it around 60 VLS cells.  Three to five 5” guns provide additional firepower along with 24 Harpoon/LRASM plus two dozen shorter range surface to surface Hellfire, or equivalent, missiles.  Six 21” torpedo tubes add to the surface attack capability.  Sensors are limited to TRS-4D or equivalent plus 360 degree EO/IR.  A modest ASW fit is included as a secondary function.  There are no helos or flight deck/hangar.

Conceptually, this ship is somewhat akin to a modernized Fletcher class DD.

Cost.  A Burke without AEGIS/AMDR, no flight deck, no hangar, and fewer VLS should cost around $800M.

Ballistic Missile Defense – This could either be combined with the dedicated AAW escort ship or split out as a separate ship.  In this case, as a separate ship, it would be fitted with a specific, optimized, ballistic missile defense radar like the SBX-1 Sea Based X-Band Radar and two dozen SM-3 missiles.  The ship would be a small, cheap, low performance, commercial based vessel.  It would have no flight deck/hangar/helos, no generic AAW defense other than two SeaRAM, no guns, and no ASW.

Cost.  A small, simple, minimally manned, commercial based ship would be very cheap.  Given that we can build a commercial large tanker/cargo ship for $100M or less, let’s call this ship’s cost $100M.  Of course that excludes the SBX-1 radar for which I have no cost estimate whatsoever.

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We see, then, that the broken up Burke consists of the following ships:

AAW Escort                $1,100M

ASW Escort                $  350M

ASuW Land Attack          $  800M

Ballistic Missile Defense $  100M

Total Cost                $2,350M ($2.35B)

So, for the cost of a single Burke, we can build four single function ships that perform each of the single functions as well or better than a Burke and can be in four places, performing four functions at once.

Four single function ships that perform their functions better than a Burke increases the overall capability of the fleet, allows four missions to be performed simultaneously in four different locations, increases fleet size by a factor of four for each Burke not built, generates more work for the industrial base, employs more naval architects/designers/construction workers, increases fleet presence by increasing ship numbers, and reduces risk aversion by making each ship cheaper and more expendable – hence, more likely to be committed to the actual task for which they are intended.

There is overwhelming historical precedence for this from WWII.  We didn’t build single, massively multi-functional ships that were too valuable and too expensive to risk in combat.  No, we built multiple, single function ships (yes, they had secondary functions but they were built with a primary function for which they were optimized), that were affordable, could be risked in combat, increased our fleet numbers, and could be in multiple places, performing multiple tasks at the same time.

This makes overwhelming sense.  We need to drastically rethink our fleet composition and start down this distributed functionality path immediately.

Note:  No one, myself included, knows what a non-existent, conceptual ship will cost.  I’ve described how to build focused, affordable ships in previous posts and comments so I’ll stand by my cost guesstimates until something better comes along.  What I won’t do is engage in cost discussions – it would be pointless.  Even if I’m off on the numbers, the concept remains.  Maybe I’ve overestimated the costs and we can build 5 ships for 1 Burke instead of only 4 as I described.  Or, maybe we can only build 6 or 7 ships for every 2 Burkes, instead of 8.  Who cares?  The concept is valid.  Unless you are a naval procurement specialist who deals exclusively with major ship purchases and can factor in my previously described affordable acquisition practices, don’t waste my time debating costs.  It’s pointless and I won’t allow it.  If you care to discuss this post, focus on the overall concept.

Army Gets It

ComNavOps has stated repeatedly that we’ve forgotten what war is.  It’s not even debatable.  Unfortunately, the only service that has even begun to acknowledge the problem and begin preparing for real war is the Army and, interestingly, they seem to be almost frantic about doing so.  They’re desperately up-gunning vehicles and working on the entire electronic/cyber warfare problem.  In the latest example, the Army is trying to “re-field” the SMART-T satellite terminal that was designed to be resistant to jamming and electromagnetic pulses (EMP) but that was fielded and, literally, parked away and forgotten (1).

The Army is also belatedly recognizing that what they’ve developed in the past was unusable by average soldiers.

“What we’re learning after 17 years of war and multiple years out at NIE (Network Integration Evaluations), is what we have out there is far too complicated for our soldiers.” (1)

The Army is also recognizing that their dependence on highly skilled manufacturer’s representatives won’t work in combat.  The reps simply won’t be there.

“Complexity isn’t just a training problem. It’s an operational problem. Systems that only function in the hands of highly trained contractors — the term of art is Field Service Representatives, or FSRs — were awkward but workable in Afghanistan and Iraq, where US troops rotated in and out of well-established Forward Operating Bases. In a Korean crisis, Eastern European war, or Third World flare-up, US forces would have to rapidly deploy all their equipment and people, set up their networks quickly and keep them running with little or no support.”

I’ve done posts on this.  The Navy is sending ships to sea which are totally dependent on manufacturer’s reps to make systems work.  That’s horribly wrong.  If the average sailor can’t operate and maintain the system then the Navy either needs to drastically enhance its training and create super techs or they need to simplify the systems. 

The former is unlikely given that many manufacturer’s reps have spent years acquiring their knowledge and expertise and have advanced degrees.  The Navy just can’t produce that level of capability starting from an 18 year old with no particularly relevant background.

The later is unpalatable to Navy leadership which uses the promise of technology to coax Congressional funding but the alternative is systems that won’t work in combat.  Would you rather have an Aegis/AMDR that can’t be maintained or an old-fashioned revolving SPS-49 that, while limited, works flawlessly and can be maintained and repaired?

The Army is frantically trying to improve their combat capability.  I think what we’re seeing is the recognition that the Army is a lot closer to facing actual combat than the other services and suddenly they’ve woken up to the fact that they’ve been sleeping on the job for decades.  There’s nothing like the threat of actual combat and death to motivate a person or organization to weed out the unnecessary and ineffective systems!  I only wish the Navy would follow the Army’s lead and wake up.  War with China is inevitable and the Navy is still sleeping.

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(1)Breaking Defense website, “Army Struggles To Streamline Its Networks For War”, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., 24-Jul-2017,

http://breakingdefense.com/2017/07/army-struggles-to-streamline-its-networks-for-war/

The Shape Of Things To Come

Today we have a guest post from a reader and frequent comment contributor.  Benjamin W. Oliver, B.Eng, is a British engineer with a slant on defense.  He currently works in Research and Development.

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We all know about how great drones are and how they will change the face of naval warfare.  Will they? Why? And what is this new face going to look like? In ..

 “The Shape of Things to Come”

By Ben Oliver

Stealth - it’s all we ever hear when it comes to the future shape of nearly everything: planes, helicopters, drones and ships. Even my mobile phone seems increasingly difficult to find with new anti-glare coatings and smooth black on black on black design.

New technology invariably influences design, or it can if it offers a proven overriding military advantage, or a capability force magnifier that offsets all the invariably competing factors in designing a ship.

Now obviously this is just a bit of fun, but do new concepts in naval drones offer this advantage and how will this affect the systems layout and overall hull design of frigates and destroyers in the future?

Let’s look at some different types of UAV; these alone seem to have proliferated to a frightening degree. And we can clearly see a day when a good portion of a warships volume may be given over to their launch recovery and maintenance.

The Copters.

Such a variety here. We have the recon, scouring the seas ahead and around its parent vessel, the fire support finding land targets and assessing the success of an attack. Weaponization is now  ranging from light land attack to the full anti-ship missile equipped asset.

  

These things can launch and recover from a standard helo flight deck and seem ideal for use on small to medium surface combatants. Some are now pretty large and are beginning to be fitted with quite advance radar, including SAR and GMTI.

Fixed Wing

As we know fixed wing offers some major advantages over rotary - mostly speed, range and endurance.

As a remote asset we now see SAR radar and various sensor packages being deployed and we can see that in the future these will make for excellent spotters \ sensor and communications extenders and perhaps organic on board airborne early warning.

I can certainly see a future where we see UAV’s extending the sensor range of frigates and destroyers, flying a constant 24 hour cycle, 50 – 100 miles out.

Recent tests by the Royal Navy have communications fixed wing drones controlling groups of up to 6 other types of drones, extending over the horizon and far out from the control source but still with the advantages of line of sight technology’s.

BUT these come with the drawback of not being able to land and take off easily although some pretty imaginative solutions have been found to this.

Scan Eagles, Catapult come Arrestor the “sky hook”

A concept shared by his big brother “Black Jack”

I think we are starting to get dangerously near to my point though now. Let’s take a look at DARPA's new and exciting “SideArm”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIX3_QCmaUM

Is that a full sized X47B …..?   No. I seriously doubt it.

For those of you who can’t, or don’t want to see the chintzy sales video, side arm is a self-erecting robot arm with long boom catapult launcher, and a kind of reverse catapult arrestor, that deploys itself out of the side of a ship ( once it clamps itself to your helo deck ). It catapults your large UAV into the wind, and then does the same trick in reverse to capture an incoming UAV, at what appears to be quite a speed.

Honestly you have to see it to believe it, if you didn’t watch the video.

Go on… live a little!

Hangers, maintenance facilities, aircraft spares and magazines plus jet fuel storage now make up a serious percentage of any modern destroyer or frigate. They have a large effect on the design of a warship and their omission is unusual in today’s world.

What of tomorrow’s world? How many types of UAV do we require, what will become essential? What kind of facilities do we require to support this increasingly large “air-wing”, launch them and recover them?

How many crew will man their control, how many maintainers, mechanics, computer and communications specialists? How many comms arrays and of what kind?

And although I’m sure one day we will have true drone aircraft carriers, I think what’s more interesting is in the shorter term, what will this do to the everyday surface combatant?

Conclusions.

I think we are going to see the percentage of hull dramatically expand in terms of Air Assets. When every frigate or destroyer can effectively have its own airborne and surface early warning, why not?

Sensor range can be compensated for by numbers and with UAV mission duration being so long, we will see a constant steam of fixed wing assets circling 24/7 using SAR and GMTI to identify sea and land based threats as a ship transits.

Possibly we will start to see fixed wing ASW assets with magnetic anomaly detectors in that pattern too?

As a rough calculation Scan Eagle has a speed of roughly 60Kts and 24 hour endurance. With a service ceiling in excess of 19,000 feet, we could easily operate a good coverage @ 100nm with say 6 – 10 in flight UAV’s. Constantly rotating and moving with the ship. A relatively short sensor range by today’s standards would not allow anything through.

Due to the problems of large fixed wing launch and recovery I think rotary wing assets are likely to be used more for some strike, pinpointing targets for land strike, keeping ‘eyes on’ for damage assessment, carrying and launching the anti-ship missiles, the torpedoes and the glide bombs of the future.  They will likely utilise a variety of new weapons specifically sized for UAV's.  We have already seen the trend in lighter weapons with the Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) and the Griffin missile (AGM-176).

To perform this expanded role, we are looking at permanent launch and recovery mechanisms for fixed wing assets. Let’s consider 2 “side arms” in recover mode deployed fast when needed from the top side of future ships and fixed wing launchers internalized in the style of “Battlestar Galactica”.  By this I mean ( if we look at the scan eagle launcher ), 2 or 4 heavy versions of this could be mounted amidships at 45 degrees forward and up, under relatively straight forward armored hatches. Rate of launch is already fine with a scan eagle’s pneumatic launcher being able to deploy and launch in just a handful of minutes, simple redundancy is all that must be considered.

I see a helicopter deck of today’s proportions but a vastly expanded hanger and with automated weapons handling facilities like the Queen Elizabeth Class or Type 26 Frigate. But it will now store not just a wide variety of UAV weapons but also modular sensor packages and parts for the 2 classes of drone:  fixed and rotary wing.

It’s likely the drones themselves will be modular and somewhat expendable to reduce maintenance requirements. “A control surface has done its hours, throw away the whole wing and pull another from stores”.

Let’s just thank F-35’s ALIS system for that idea.

I don’t think a frigate or destroyer will be issued an exact number of drones. I think its stores will carry modular common components designed to allow the construction, “maintenance” and replacement of a required capability for a required mission duration.

64 wing sets, 16 bodies, 24 GMTI Radar modules etc

Let’s not even get started on 3D printing. (A subject for another post maybe)

I don’t think we will see the loss of the manned Helo, there are too many jobs it covers. Too much man in the loop requirement. Its capabilities will change as UAV’s take some of the load but that just frees it up to do other things.

Undoubtedly the ship remains the thing. Heavy weapons will still be deployed from the ship. Even now the limitations of our weapons are bound by finding and targeting, not by range.

With TLAM, SM6 and LRASM we hold the keys to long range engagement through UAV data streaming. On land, in the air and on the surface of the sea huge advantages can be leveraged.

UAV is inevitable. We have laid the stage with our weapons development. Now we just need to fit the final piece to enable our surface combatants to multiply their power many fold, primarily as standalone assets but also as part of a highly extended new shape battle group. 

It’s a strange new world, but one we could be headed for sooner than we think.

EMALS Fixed ! - Again

You’ve undoubtedly heard by now that the Navy believes, yet again, that the EMALS catapult system is fixed and ready to go.  Supposedly, it can now launch aircraft with external fuel tanks.  Of course, it was previously ready to go until the issue with drop tanks was discovered and it was ready to go until the issue with the bouncing F-35’s was discovered.  I haven't heard anything about the bouncing F-35 issue being fixed but the Navy says the system is ready to go!

The Navy claims the system is ready because they’ve performed around 70 test launches.  Of course, they didn’t say how many of those tests were successful and how many failed.

Speaking of failure, you’ll recall that the last data we had from DOT&E reported mean time between failures of around 240 cycles – a critical failure every 240 launches – so that’s still a problem, presumably.

You’ll also recall that the Navy has refused to provide subsequent reliability data to DOT&E. 

But it’s ready to go, this time. 

I hope it is ready but history suggests it’s not.

Ballistic Missile Defense - Operator Error

The Navy has concluded that a recent failed anti-ballistic missile test of the Standard SM-3 Block IIa was due to an operator who inadvertently input an identification of the target as a “friendly”, thus causing the SM-3 to self-destruct before hitting the target.

“A U.S. Missile Defense Agency review of a failed ballistic missile intercept test showed that a mistaken input into the combat system by a sailor on the destroyer John Paul Jones caused the missile to self-destruct before reaching the target.

A tactical datalink controller, in charge of maintaining encrypted data exchanges between ships and aircraft, accidentally identified the incoming ballistic missile target as a friendly in the system, causing the SM-3 missile to self-destruct in flight …” (1)

We’re building a vast network of sensors and weapons as the foundation of the Third Offset Strategy – a strategy that will give us an unrivaled edge over our enemies and assure us of maintaining combat superiority.  At least, that’s what we’re being told.

And now, we see that a simple operator input error can entirely negate a ballistic missile intercept.  What if that had been an actual intercept instead of a test and the missile had been a nuclear missile aimed at a US base or city?  Do we really want to base our entire military “advantage” on a system so prone to inadvertent and haphazard failure?

All of us understand that software systems, and their inputs/outputs are subject to bugs and glitches under the best of conditions, let alone in the middle of war when electronic countermeasures will be blitzing the system, cyber/hack attacks will be constant, and the stress of combat will guarantee that input mistakes and output misinterpretations (remember Vincennes?) will happen with regularity.  Do we really want to bet our military future on such a strategy and such systems?

It’s interesting to note that the Russians and Chinese, while investing heavily in electronic and cyber warfare, are also producing massive increases in traditional, raw, brutal, explosive firepower.  They seem to understand that electronic and cyber warfare will be useful but that firepower still rules the battlefield.

Recall the Vietnam war.  Recall the air strikes by US planes.  For all the sophisticated surface to air missiles, radar warning receivers, countermeasures, and high performance aircraft with computer controlled navigation and weapon delivery systems, etc., our aircraft were still shot down, all too often, by old fashioned ZSU-23 barrage gunfire.

There’s a place for electronic and cyber warfare, without a doubt, but it’s as a complement to explosive firepower not a replacement for it and certainly not as the foundation of an entire military strategy.

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(1)Navy Times website, “Sailor error led to failed US Navy ballistic missile intercept test”, ”, David B. Larter, 24-Jul-2017,

https://www.navytimes.com/naval/2017/07/24/sailor-error-led-to-failed-us-navy-ballistic-missile-intercept-test/