Complete Guide by Drones The air, sea, land defence decision-maker’s technology reference monitor. Established 1976 monitor. technology reference sea, land defence decision-maker’s The air, INTERNATIONAL: Supplement to issue 3/2008 Premonition or Logical Assumption? .V. Roe (Avro), Breguet, Curtiss, given in the earlier editions of Armada’s supple- Caproni, Convair, Dewoitine, Douglas, ments on drones, and we would not fall too short A Grumman, McDonnell, Fairchild, of the number of military aircraft manufacturers Fairey, Focke-Wulf, Handley-Page, Heinkel, of yesteryear. Laughead (Lockheed brothers’ original name), Ford, Hurel-Dubois, Messerschmitt, Maurane, The development of military aviation only North American, Nieuport, Latécoère, Polikar- started to soar during the Great War and went on pov, Republic, Rockwell, Sopwith, Saunders- to grow to the above-mentioned telephone Roe, Spad, De Havilland, Supermarine, Vought – directory situation until the Second World War. these illustrious names now belong to a long Then consolidations (as euphemistically put) gone past. The list is much longer and could fill a started to take place. Extraordinarily, the devel- phone directory, maybe two. opment of drones followed the same application pattern as that of piloted aircraft at the begin- Today, how many names are left in the defence ning of the last century. The first aircraft were aviation world? Fingers of only two hands suffice used as observation “apparatuses” (aircraft were to reckon them: Boeing, Dassault, Saab, Lock- initially referred to as “apparatus” in early main- heed Martin, Embraer, MiG, Eads, Sukhoi, BAE tenance manuals), particularly to spot enemy Systems, a few trainer aircraft manufacturers artillery movements. Then came the first and, apart from a few of code-numbered facto- bombers – in fact initially the same types as the ries in the Peoples Republic of China (generally observation aircraft, but from which bombs were clones from the Eastern World), that is about it. tossed overboard by the ‘co-pilot’ in WWI. Final- But for how long? Particularly in Europe, where ly these needed to be countered, so the intercep- there currently are only two manufacturers that tor aircraft was invented, which is possibly a task still produce fighter aircraft of their own. that will be transferred to the so-called Ucav for its own self-protection in the future. The reader will, by now, have guessed what we are driving at. Look at the four-page spread in There is every reason to believe that the drone the centre of this supplement. It is far, very far, company consolidation process will also follow from being exhaustive and only refers to drones the same pattern as that of traditional aircraft that necessarily had to be cut down in terms of manufacturers. In fact, it already started a few numbers by either technical or strategic rele- years ago when a Vietnam-age drone pioneer – vance, or both – granted, it is a choice that can Ryan – was taken over by Northrop Grumman, always be disputed. Add to this the other makes itself a company resulting from a massive consoli - and types mentioned in the text and many others dation. Eric H. Biass 1 United States Fly High Complete Guide The Northrop Grumman Global Hawk will attract military and paramilitary users While the United States and the Soviet Union were the first to re-explore developed for the US Air Force. The uncrewed aircraft technologies since the second world war in the 1960s, notably United Arab Emirates use the Tcom Tas (Tactical Aerostat System) with 17M and through Ryan and Tupolev (but with mixed results in both cases), Israel was real- 71M balloons. ly the first nation to turn the discipline into a viable proposition in the 1980s, before being overtaken in terms of market size by the United States. Hale The leader in the Hale (high altitude, long Roy Braybrook FY07. Even when small hand-launched endurance) category is still the Northrop systems are excluded, American drones Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk. The first are currently flying over 15,000 hours per of seven YRQ-4A development aircraft ompared to spending on manned month in southwest Asia. The AAI RQ-7 flew in 1998. Nine production RQ-4A aircraft (the Lockheed Martin F-22 Shadow 200 is contributing over 7000, the Block 10s (seven for the US Air Force C alone receiving over $ 3.5 billion in General Atomics MQ-1 Predator over and two Global Hawk Maritime Demon- FY08), that on drones is small, but rising 6000 (out of a global total of more than stration aircraft for the US Navy) have impressively. The Washington-based Teal 10,000), the Northrop Grumman MQ-5 been followed by six stretched RQ-4B Group estimated in late 2007 that the Hunter around 1700 and the Northrop Block 20s, with gross weight increased to worldwide annual spend on drones will Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk over 500 14,628 kg. The first of 26 RQ-4B Block almost double from the current $ 3.4 hours. 30s with ‘multi-intelligence’ payload billion to around $ 7.3 billion within a including Asip (Advanced Signals Intelli- decade, thereby making this the most Lighter-than-Air gence Program) was delivered to the US dynamic growth sector of the aerospace Air Force in late 2007. The service plans business. Uncrewed lighter-than-air vehicles to buy up to 15 RQ-4B Block 40s with the The Pentagon’s own forecasts show its exploit the drone’s freedom from the Northrop Grumman/Raytheon MP-Rtip unmanned aircraft procurement budget constraints of human endurance. The sys- (Multi-Platform Radar Technlogy Inser- rising steadily from $ 878.4 million in tems used operationally by the US Army FY07 to a peak of $ two billion in FY10. are the Raytheon/Tcom Raid (Rapid In the latter year, America’s correspon- Aerostat Initial Deployment), the Lock- On the Cover ding RDT&E expenditure is predicted as heed Martin/ISL-Bosch Aerospace Reap ill modularity have a future $ 1.3 billion and operating & mainte- (Rapidly Elevated Aerostat Platform) in drones? Eads, France, nance as $ 421.2 million. and the Lockheed Martin PTDS (Persis- W Spain and Germany seem to The US armed services are estimated tent Threat Detection System). The think so, as they are studying this fea- to already have a total of around 5300 Raytheon/Tcom Jlens (Joint Land sibility with the drones in their inventories, and this num- Attack Elevated Netted Sensor) is being Advanced Modu- ber is clearly set to rise dramatically. Pro- developed to warn deployed US forces of lar UAV featuring curement of the Aerovironment (AV) cruise missile attack. ‘plug and play’ RQ-11 Raven alone is aimed at 3333 sys- Other nations using aerostat-mounted modules, and this tems, each with three air vehicles. The sensors include Israel, with Elta EL/M- not only includes Raven has been flying over 12,000 2083 radars on Tcom platforms. India has payloads but also hours/month, and is expected to fly bought similar systems. Israel also oper- wings of varying 300,000 in 2008. ates the Tcom 32M aerostat with EL/I- spans to best match The US military drone flying total was 3330 radar. Pakistan uses the ILC Dover the mission profile. 165,000 hours in FY06, and 258,000 in Tars (Tethered Aerostat Radar System), 2 armada INTERNATIONAL 3/2008 Unmanned aircraft from AAI are “looking good.” U.S. Army ShadowShadow® 200 systems protect warfighters in Iraq and Afghanistan with integrated situational awareness data. 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Personnel seen in this ad are models, not soldiers. mated to be worth around $ 3.08 billion This illustration may (including $ 780 million for the procure- relate to the study ment of three initial production aircraft) programme for a over the next five years. A further 62 twin-engined high- production aircraft are expected to cost altitude, long $ 3.4 billion in current values. endurance drone The RQ-4 will form the uncrewed project that Boeing adjunct to the Boeing P-8A Poseidon. The is conducting in Navy wants to be able to mount five 24- cooperation with hour orbits (one over each deployed fleet) Aurora Flight for seven days at a time, at 3700 km radius Sciences. (Boeing) from their bases, with 80% reliability. Northrop Grumman was selected for the Bams SDD (system development and demonstration) phase on 22 April 2008. This is to lead to first delivery in 2011, Lrip (low-rate initial production) in 2011, IOC (initial operational capability) with three Lrip aircraft in 2015 and FOC (full operational capability) in 2019 at the Complete Guide same time as the P-8A. tion Program) sensor, giving it a total of Eads, was awarded a $ 559 million con- Australia will take part in the SDD 54 production aircraft. Two of the YRQ- tract by the German Ministry of Defence phase, expecting to acquire Bams under 4As have been assigned to Nasa/Dryden. to build the Euro Hawk sigint, surveil- the RAAF’s Air 7000 programme, to oper- Three RQ-4A Block 10s are deployed lance and reconnaissance system, a deriv- ate with the Lockheed Martin P-3C and with US Central Command (and report- ative of the RQ-4B Block 20, with a later the P-8A, at an increased radius of edly based in Qatar) for missions over payload developed by Eads.