The US Navy has chosen its MMA platform and has now turned its attention to finding it a high-flying, long-endurance unmanned partner
Despite Boeing's capture of the Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA) on 14 June, about one-third of the US Navy's future maritime patrol force is only now entering the definition stage. Even so, earlier funding cuts by the navy could soon be compounded by new cuts proposed in Congress.
Navy leaders signed a draft requirements document in early June for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) programme, an unmanned partner for MMA that can fly higher and remain on station longer. But the programme faces a new round of budget cuts and schedule delays. BAMS is expected to be reviewed by navy acquisition leaders in late June or early July, and the launch of a competitive phase in August may be pushed back several months or more.
But cost-cutting by the navy earlier this year has gutted the original goals for a multi-year maritime demonstration of BAMS-like capabilities using two Northrop Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawks.
The first of the two aircraft is on track to be delivered by the end of the year, and the second will follow in 2005, says Northrop Grumman. The navy is buying the aircraft under the air force's Lot 2 low-rate initial production contract, and is modifying the UAVs to the air force's "Tandem Thrust" configuration used during the Global Hawk deployment to Australia in 2001.
A roughly $330 million, six-year funding profile has been scaled back to a one-year line item for about $75.4 million in the fiscal year 2004 budget. The funding cuts have reduced the demonstration's goals largely to a "cultural building" exercise.
An original objective to develop concepts of operations and tactics for UAVs has also been retained, but there will be far less data to support any conclusions. A plan to conduct a four-phase demonstration has been scrapped, as only the first phase remains funded. Rather than fit new sensors to the Global Hawks, the navy is adding a maritime mode to the existing Raytheon integrated surveillance system.
The cuts also deleted an original goal that called for the navy to use the Global Hawks as testbeds for advanced payloads, alternate sensors, autonomous decision aids and command and control systems. A shipboard landing test was also scratched, says Paul Meyer, Northrop Grumman vice-president of advanced capabilities development, who adds: "The whole thing has been rescoped."
BAMS development has also been scaled back, with the most notable dropped requirement being a signals intelligence package. The UAV will still feature a multi-intelligence package, including a maritime tracking radar and an electro-optical/ infrared sensor on board.
Funding cut proposed
On top of those reductions, the House Appropriations Committee has proposed a major funding cut in its report accompanying the FY05 defence spending bill for the BAMS development effort. The impact of the cuts was still being assessed as Flight International went to press.
Despite the budget cuts, the navy is pursuing an aggressive development schedule for BAMS, intending to relieve the pressure of long-endurance surveillance missions on the ageing Lockheed Martin P-3C Orion fleet by the end of the decade. Nearly 80P-3Cs are being retired over three years after an airframe fatigue inspection revealed the potential for cracks to begin rapidly developing on the oldest aircraft.
BAMS vehicles are now expected to enter service in 2010, which is two years later than originally planned, but still at least two years before the first MMA unit becomes operational.
A core BAMS requirement in the new draft documents calls for a land-based fleet that can provide persistent, 24h coverage anywhere for at least seven consecutive days, using a limit of three UAVs in the air from one station at any one time. In later years, the navy expects upgrades that will allow the same UAV system to provide the same level of coverage for 30 days.
Unlike the Global Hawk or General Atomics Predator UAV systems, the draft requirements do not call for developing a deployable mission control element. While a crew at a main operating base would control the aircraft, the UAV's sensors could be operated from ships, other aircraft and perhaps by ground troops. "It's about the information and getting as much data on the ground that you can," says Meyer.
A fleet of 30-50 BAMS UAVs would be distributed to five sites - Sigonella, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Kaneoke, Hawaii; Diego Garcia; and NAS Jacksonville, Florida.
At first the drones will back up about 148 P-3Cs being maintained in service after 2006. These will be augmented by 108 MMAs delivered from as early as 2009 until about 2019. The first MMA unit is expected to become operational in 2013, but may be accelerated by one year if Boeing can fulfil production rate promises.
BAMS only recently became a competitive acquisition. In April, despite heavy US Air Force pressure to skip a competition and choose the Global Hawk, navy leaders opened the programme to other bidders.
To challenge Northrop Grumman, a Lockheed Martin/General Atomics team plans to offer a variant of the MQ-9A Predator B called the Mariner, which borrows the wing of NASA's Altair UAV. The Mariner's flight envelope is being expanded during demonstration exercises that started in April. Later this year, the aircraft will be deployed from southern California to a navy base in Alaska on a single flight. Lockheed Martin and General Atomics have been testing Raytheon and Telephonics radar sensors during the flights.
Gulfstream also has declared its intention to offer a hybrid manned/unmanned G550 variant, but company officials have recently stopped discussing their plans. The aircraft's automated flight controls can handle the entire flight, except for take-off and landing, and only minor adjustments are needed to make it operate fully autonomously.
Price advantage
The Lockheed Martin team points to a $4 million price tag for the Predator B as a key advantage in the competition, especially as the navy's requirements come under funding pressure. But Northrop Grumman's Meyer says the navy could meet its requirements with fewer of the faster and higher-flying Global Hawks. Gulfstream officials have said that a roughly $35 million price tag for a green G550 compares favourably to a Global Hawk, which has an official fly-away price tag of about $25 million.
Gulfstream says its aircraft offers greater flexibility. To ferry a ground station and crew across airspace commonly restricted to UAVs, a pilot could be in the cockpit. On arrival at its staging base, the crew could unload and set up the ground station, then reconfigure the aircraft for unmanned flight.
Again, the navy will be choosing between a turboprop and a jet, which recalls the MMA's choice between Lockheed Martin's Orion 21 and Boeing's winning 737-800ERX platform. In both cases, performance requirements were crafted carefully to accommodate the inherent gulfs of speed and loiter performance between the two aircraft types.
Navy officials insist the selection of Boeing's jet for MMA will not colour the requirements for BAMS. The navy has no plans even to scrub its draft requirements document for BAMS to make it more suitable for a manned jet-powered partner.
"We had fundamental range and performance requirements. Both [MMA] platforms met that," says John Young, assistant secretary of the navy for acquisition, technology and logistics. "The requirements are slightly different, more in persistence terms, for the UAV, and they complement each other in terms of persistence on station. This won't dramatically change the BAMS decision base."
The navy's concept for BAMS began to take shape in 2000. Navy planners searching for a replacement for the ageing P-3C Orion saw a need for an unmanned adjunct for the MMA, to relieve the cost of wear-and-tear and the danger of crew fatigue on very long-endurance missions.
"The BAMS requirement is a persistent ability to cover large sections in an unmanned way, which is potentially more affordable," says Young. "This is a requirement that says the manned aircraft needs the legs to get to a point, potentially enhance that [unmanned] coverage, but also have the ability to [employ] weapons or sensors on what hopefully is a more localised track. You could envision a BAMS ... handing a [target] track to an MMA."
More precise operational planning for BAMS is left intentionally vague. Lacking any experience operating high-altitude surveillance drones, the navy plans to catch up over the next several years with the scaled-back demonstration programme.
STEPHEN TRIMBLE / WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flight International
