“We’re at the tipping point of unmanned aerial systems’ ability to deliver capability to the Soldier,” said Col. Thomas von Eschenbach.
The unmanned aerial/aircraft system, or UAS, isn’t any longer seen by Soldiers as a brand new system and because the months and years pass, it is going to “not just be utilized by a couple of, but becomes integral to the military fabric and the way it fights and is used and understood,” said Eschenbach, who’s the UAS capability manager for U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.
Eschenbach and others spoke today at a media roundtable at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., where a party was held marking the Army’s milestone of two million UAS flight hours.
Col. Timothy Baxter, project manager, UAS, noted that it took two decades for Army unmanned aircraft systems to arrive 1 million flight hours. That milestone came in 2010. With increased use of these systems, it took only a few more years to succeed in the two million flight-hours milestone.
He said what’s most impressive is that 90 percent of total UAS flight hours were logged in direct support of combat operations. “Every a kind of hours has meant something to a commander at the ground overseas engaged in combat,” Baxter said.
Baxter noted that of the full two million flight hours, Shadow UAS logged 900,000 of these. However, as more Gray Eagles are fielded, he said he expects it to be the system with the foremost impressive mileage.
Rich Kretzschmar, deputy project manager, UAS, said that reaching three million flight hours may take longer than it did to get from one to 2 million as the operations tempo in theater has now leveled off.
And, as more UAS systems return to the U.S. from overseas, there can be fewer opportunities to fly them by reason of restricted airspace flight rules, Baxter added.
But, the UAS will play an important a part of the Army’s aviation restructure initiative, Eschenbach said.
As brigade combat teams, or BCTs, shrink from four to 3 per division and as maneuver battalions are reinvested back into other BCTs, three Shadow UAS platoons might be put inside each attack reconnaissance squadron, he said. That could add a complete of 30 platoons of Shadows into the combat aviation brigade structure. Those squadrons also will contain AH-64E Apache helicopters.
FUTURE UAS FLIGHT PATH
Don’t expect to work out various new UAS models, Baxter cautioned.
“Our platforms are the platforms we’re going to have for the foreseeable future within the Army,” he explained.
Instead, he said future efforts would be within the area of latest technologies for advanced payloads and enhancements in man-to-unmanned teaming.
As to unmanned vs manned, Kretzschmar referred to that UASs aren’t replacing pilots.
Rather, he said, they’re the “extension of the commander’s ability to do things, extend reach, reduce risk and recover situational awareness at the battlefield.”
Also within the cards for UAS is something not too sexy, but important nonetheless to the cheap-challenged Army: sustainment costs.
Baxter said the UAS community has moved far from contractor logistics support to “green-suiter” maintainers, as Soldiers get their very own military occupational specialty and become more adept. Within the next war, the military might not have the posh of putting in place forward operating bases teeming with contract support.
Another cost savings, he stated, is thru applying “performance-based logistics” to contracts, in order to “incorporate better buying power.”
Since Eschenbach is with TRADOC it’s not surprising he sees doctrine in addition to the operational environment dictating the vision of where UASs are headed.
Eschenbach thinks UASs have capabilities that go far beyond the present state of reconnaissance, surveillance, security and precision strikes.
His team of planners is already observing UAS employment in “Force 2025,” where UAS will vastly extend the network, meaning the reach that commanders have at the ground.
As this occurs over the approaching years, he said Army leaders might want to better understand the capabilities of UASs and what they could do for them.
“We’re asking warfighters in a smaller, leaner Army to be more expeditionary, lethal and survivable, concentrated on the subsequent thing our nation asks us to do,” Eschenbach concluded. In that environment, there’s “plenty of future for UAS.”
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