Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC
SENIOR officials in the US Department of Defense are expected to decide soon how best to revamp management of its unmanned-air-vehicle (UAV) programmes.
Although maintaining the status quo is one option, Paul Kaminski, the Pentagon's acquisition chief, is expected to make changes in the wake of UAV procurement setbacks. These involved termination of the medium-range UAV and the Hunter short-range drone projects.
US defence officials were already debating the merger of the UAV Joint Project Office (UAV-JPO) and the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO) into an Airborne Reconnaissance Office (ARO) before the Pentagon was stung by new Congressional criticism on UAV procurement.
DARO was established in late 1993, at Congressional direction, to centralise management of existing airborne-reconnaissance programmes, and to co-ordinate the development and acquisition of new tactical manned and unmanned systems.
It was created, in part, to placate US lawmakers unhappy with the UAV-JPO's past performance in sustaining UAV projects. The UAV-JPO was lambasted for "disarray" and for the lack of affordable planning for UAVs, and Congress recommended closing the office.
The House National Security Committee, in its fiscal year 1997 defence-budget report, has taken the Pentagon to task for its running of UAV programmes.
The report criticises "-the lack of validated requirements and the frequency with which requirements changed". The Predator UAV was labelled "a symbol of bureaucratic ineptness".
In May, Alliant Techsystems was selected to produce the Tactical UAV (TUAV), but the Committee asked why two contractors were not selected to maintain competition. It also questioned TUAV affordability.
The Committee urged the transfer of control of the Predator to the US Air Force "...and, for fiscal year 1998, to transfer the responsibility for UAV procurement to US military departments".
Shifting control of UAV projects to the US military services is one of four options which are under review by Kaminski. Maintaining the status quo is another. The Pentagon could decide to hold off from combining the UAV-JPO and DARO for at least a year, or it could move to merge the two organisations immediately.
An area of discussion is that an ARO is needed, to improve the management of tactical intelligence, just as the highly secret National Reconnaissance Office (the NRO) was created to oversee US spy satellites (the so-called "national-intelligence" programmes.)
Source: Flight International
