Page 41 - Australian Defence Magazine Feb 2020

FEBRUARY 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
AIRPOWER UNMANNED 41
Yet even if the Loyal Wingman project one day leads to a fleet of autonomous fighter-like aircraft in RAAF’s inventory, AIRCDRE Goldie warns that adversaries will soon be able to discriminate and target higher-value aircraft. Staying ahead of the curve, in other words, is a continuous investment.
“It won’t be long after we field that technology before an adversary can target any vulnerabilities between the low- cost unmanned aircraft and the manned aircraft,” AIRC- DRE Goldie said. “So it’s a constant battle.”
This is key to the transient advantage concept that Plan Jericho has been exploring since its inception in 2015.
NEXT STEPS
For AIRCDRE Goldie and his team, the immediate next steps in the unmanned domain are to prepare advice for government in regards to major forthcoming acquisitions of remotely-piloted aircraft.
A decision on whether to acquire the next tranche of MQ-4C Triton aircraft is expected this year. Northrop Grumman has been pushing for Air Force to commit to buying the next four as a block and has prioritised invest- ments in Australia, setting up local Triton program offices in Adelaide and Canberra and appointing Jake Campbell as Australian Triton Program Director.
“The government is about to make a decision around the next lot of air vehicles,” Campbell said to ADM. “We’d hope they’d make a decision to buy those vehicles as a block. We’d then be able to generate more certainty for Australian industry – the business case would get better – which means we’d hopefully also be able to generate more opportunities for Australian industry.”
“Our job is to tell government whether we think any par- ticular product is worth acquiring and operating,” AIRCDRE Goldie said. “The government wants to satisfy itself that the risk profile justifies the spend, at the current moment. Is now the right time to acquire one, two, or four - or
“That comes down to our job in terms of working out the basis of provisioning, how many aircraft, where will they be based, what does the cost profile look like, and then govern- ment will ultimately decide whether that’s a good way to spend Commonwealth resources.”
WORKFORCE OPPORTUNITIES
The nature of all remotely operated or piloted aircraft also presents an opportunity for Air Force to find efficiencies in the workforce. Just as unmanned aircraft fall somewhere on a spectrum, so too do the jobs that keep those aircraft in the sky.
“We’re starting to think about how we crew unmanned ISR aircraft in a way that means we don’t need a whole workforce on the MQ-4C, a whole other workforce on the MQ-9B, and a third on the P-8A, and so on,” AIRCDRE Goldie said to ADM. “We’d then have five or six different workforces all potentially operating in Adelaide and all doing essentially the same thing.”
Instead, Air Force is examining what personnel are able to be shared across multiple platforms and what skill sets are most transferable. The MQ-4C Triton and MQ-9 Sky Guardian, for example, require pilots to possess very similar skill sets to traditionally flown aircraft. There are arguably more similarities between the skill sets of Triton pilots and P-8A Poseidon pilots than there are between P8-A Poseidon pilots and F-35 pilots, because the former two platforms are designed to complement each other.
“What we’re really driving towards is co-locating air- crew,” AIRCDRE Goldie said. “So even though the P-8A is physically located in Edinburgh and some Tritons might be physically located in Tindal, the aircrew will all be located in Edinburgh – as may the aircrew for other platforms.
“That means future pilots might fly one of these aircraft one day and another a different day. Personnel that operate sensors are clearly employable on many different aircraft, such as MQ-4C Tritons, MQ-9B Sky Guardians, MC-55
Peregrines, and P-8A Poseidons.
“What we’re trying to do is find efficien-
cies, particularly in aircraft that have ground stations or extension stations – Triton and Sky Guardian, but also the Peregrine,” AIRCDRE Goldie explained.
RAAF is also looking into whether the physical requirements expected in current roles remain relevant to an increasingly un- manned future.
should we wait? A lot will be down to whether we, as subject matter experts, think the pro- gram is sufficiently mature.”
The USN is also taking an incremental approach to its Triton acquisition program given the degree of risk. For example, one aircraft operated by Unmanned Patrol Squadron (VUP) 19 in California crashed on a runway in September 2018 after the land- ing gear failed to deploy.
“THE REAL ADVANTAGE OF FUTURE AUTONOMOUS AIRCRAFT FROM A FORCE PROJECTION POINT OF VIEWISTHEABILITYTO CREATE COMBAT MASS.”
“Even the USN is incrementally buying
this aircraft, and we need to settle the final operational configuration for production and further develop some of the operational concepts,” AIRCDRE Goldie said.
The Commonwealth has announced a down-select for the MQ-9B Sky Guardian variant to allow investigation to in- form a final decision by Government, planned for 2022. A modified version of the in-service MQ-9A Reaper, the MQ- 9B will be operated by the UK and Belgium at this stage. The primary difference between the two variants is that the MQ-9B can be certified to fly in civilian airspace.
“It’s been through Gate 0 and Gate 1, so it’s now more about what the acquisition looks like,” AIRCDRE Goldie said.
“What physical standards will we require for pilots? All those things that are currently considered, like corrective lenses or lower limb injuries, are they all essential if you’re going to fly a Triton?” AIRCDRE Goldie said. “If they’re not, we could open up the recruit- ing pool quite significantly. When we talk about other crew
members the pool might open even further.”
RAAF has already begun investigating the possibilities
and aims to have a path forward by the end of the year.
“I really want to understand the workforce. We’ve embed- ded crews and other personnel in the US and the UK to start the learning process,” AIRCDRE Goldie said. “By the end of 2020 we’re going to need a good understanding of
how we recruit and what we expect.” ■