Journey Page 37
RPAs are one of many means of collecting data—data that when processed, analyzed, and integrated becomes the fuel that feeds our global integrated ISR process. It provides us with a capability that is absolutely vital at all levels of conflict—strategic, operational, and tactical, where the difficult guesswork on what hostile forces are around the corner, on the roof, or over the wall is substantially reduced for our ground forces. To Secretary Gates—just like the downrange commanders who were clamoring for these tools—it was a no-brainer: ISR saves lives. His frustration was palpable, but those at the top levels of the Air Force did more to exacerbate his apprehension than assuage it. It seemed that very little had changed since 1992, when, as CIA director, Gates pushed hard to convince the Air Force to partner with him in developing technologically advanced drones to provide continuous photographic and intercepted signals intelligence coverage. “The Air Force wasn’t interested,” Gates recalls, the rationale being that “people join the Air Force to fly airplanes, and drones had no pilots.”
In the summer of 2007, Secretary Gates directed the Air Force to present him with a plan to increase its RPA capacity posthaste, but the drawn-out implementation timetable the Air Force proposed demonstrated that the Service failed to grasp the urgent need for downrange ISR. Instead, the Air Force proposed ending all funding for the revered U-2 spy plane, which was still providing remarkable intelligence. “I thought proposing to ground it at this juncture was just plain crazy,” Gates laments. “Further, nearly every time Moseley and Air Force Secretary Mike Wynne came to see me, it was about a new bomber or more F-22s. Both were important capabilities for the future, but neither would play any part in the wars we were already in.” Once again, the traditional “fighter/bomber” culture seemed to cloud the leaders’ abilities to consider new paradigms. Gates rightfully recognized that success on the twenty-first-century battlefield demanded outside-the-box innovations. He felt like he was butting heads with a service whose culture seemed to impede his objectives—in this case the rapid expansion of RPAs.
Between his twenty-six years in the CIA and four years as president of Texas A&M University—two institutions with rock-solid cultures—Secretary Gates knew that it would take fortitude to overcome the perceived antipathy to pressing battlefield needs. Yet without Service support, a swift expansion of our airborne ISR assets would be unlikely. He convened an ISR task force in hopes of finding viable options, and turned to a “strong supporter and valuable ally”—Chairman Mike Mullen. About the same time, the nuclear debacle ignited and became the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Strolling down the Arnold Corridor of the Pentagon, Gates glanced up at the long row of ornately framed oil portraits lining the wall, and thought about the men who had led his Air Force since its inception in 1947. (Gates was an Air Force 2nd Lieutenant assigned to the Strategic Air Command as an intelligence officer.) General Carl Spaatz, fighter pilot. Hoyt Vanderberg, fighter pilot. Curtis LeMay, bomber pilot. Bomber, bomber, fighter … each of the eighteen prior chiefs had been either a fighter or bomber pilot. It was time for a fresh perspective.
There’s one segment of the Air Force that duplicates many aspects of the fighter/bomber culture, and that’s where the secretary turned for the solution: special operations. I have little doubt that my background as an operator played a huge role in his placing his trust in me to be Chief. Do I respect the fighter/bomber communities? Absolutely. But I share that respect with every other American service man or woman who lays their life on the line to protect our liberty.
I’ve shared a lot about how much of my good fortune I owe to my Army mentors, but I’ve also enjoyed significant collaboration with my Navy partners. The SEAL Creed includes a clause that reads “We expect innovation.” Perhaps that’s a concept that should be added to the Airman’s Creed. It certainly encompasses what the secretary had in mind in his call for expanded ISR and RPAs, and I pledged to him that I shared his vision and would do everything in my power to expedite its implementation.
During my tenure, the three primary RPAs were the MQ-1 Predator, the MQ-9 Reaper, and the RQ-4 Global Hawk. The Reaper and Predator are AC/DC; they can do either kinetic (offensive lethal strike) or non-kinetic (ISR) missions, or both, and it’s one of their distinct advantages. They see the target and they can strike the target, with very little delay.
The MQ-1 Predator is an armed, multi-mission, single-engine, propeller-driven remotely piloted aircraft that operates over the horizon at medium altitude (25,000-foot ceiling) for long endurance and provides real-time intelligence (including full-motion video), surveillance, reconnaissance, target acquisition, and strike capability. Given its significant loiter time, wide-range sensors, and precision weapons, it provides a unique capability of performing strike, coordination, and reconnaissance (SCAR) against high-value, fleeting, and time-sensitive targets. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) divested the MQ-1 in FY 2015, and the Air Force is in the process of divesting the MQ-1 and replacing all aircraft with MQ-9s.
The MQ-9 Reaper is an armed, multi-mission, single-engine, turboprop, remotely piloted aircraft that is employed primarily against high-value, fleeting, dynamic, time-critical targets, and secondarily as an intelligence collection asset. About four times heavier than the Predator, the Reaper can fly twice as fast, go twice as high, and carry significantly more weapons than the MQ-1. The MQ-9 carries a robust suite of visual sensors for targeting, as well as a laser range finder/designator, which precisely designates targets for employment of laser-guided munitions, including its GBU-12 Paveway II Laser-Guided Bombs. The Reaper is also equipped with a synthetic aperture radar to enable GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munitions targeting. The MQ-9 can also employ four laser-guided Air-to-Ground Missile (AGM)-114 Hellfire missiles, which provide highly accurate, low-collateral damage, anti-armor, and anti-personnel engagement capabilities. The full-motion video from each of the imaging sensors (infrared, color/monochrome daylight TV, and image-intensified TV) can be viewed as separate video streams or fused.
USAF Photo
The RQ-4 Global Hawk is a high-altitude (60,000-foot ceiling), jet-powered, long-endurance (thirty-plus hours) remotely piloted aircraft with an integrated sensor suite that provides a persistent, near-real-time broad spectrum of global, all-weather, day or night intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance using imagery intelligence (IMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), and moving target indicator (MTI) sensors. With its long loiter times over target areas, Global Hawk can survey as much as 40,000 square miles (100,000 km2) of terrain a day.
Global Hawk is a big airplane used for surveillance only. USAF photo
RQ-170 SENTINEL
The Lockheed Martin RQ-170 is a low-observable RPA that got a lot of attention in December of 2011 when the Iranian government announced that they had brought one down near the city of Kashmar in northeast Iran. Just a few months earlier, Marc Ambinder of the National Journal tweeted that an RQ-170 was overhead on May 2 during Operation NEPTUNE SPEAR, the JSOC raid on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The Washington Post identified the bat-winged stealth RPAs as providing the real-time imagery that President Obama and his national security team were watching during the raid.
RPAs are also equipped to eavesdrop on electronic transmissions, enabling U.S. officials to monitor the Pakistani response, according to the Post, which went on to quote retired Air Force Lt Gen David Deptula, who served as head of intelligence and surveillance for the Air Force. “It’s a difficult challenge trying to secure information about any area or object of interest that is in a location where access is denied. The challenge is multiplied when the surveillance needs to be continuous, which makes non-stealthy slow-speed aircraft easier to detect.” The RQ-170 is an ISR platform that meets that challenge.
When I got back to Washington in 2008 we had between eight and fourteen orbits of remotely piloted aircraft surveillance capability. That’s the level that Secretary Gates publicly dismissed as an indication of the Air Force’
s half-hearted commitment to the effort. Each orbit, or CAP (Combat Air Patrol), provides twenty-four-hour coverage, 365 days a year. To do so, each CAP optimally requires four aircraft and ten crews, including the pilot and sensor operator, seated side by side in their “cockpit,” a high-tech cubicle in a secured building often thousands of miles away from the aircraft they are piloting.
From the moment I stepped in, I felt a great responsibility to live up to the SECDEF’s guidance. So, in part in response to that, but more importantly in response to the battlefield demand signal, we set out to grow the remotely piloted aircraft capability as rapidly as we could. We compressed the OPTEMPO to provide the same coverage with only 2.5 aircraft and seven crews—an effective means of accelerating the escalation in capability, but at the expense of stressing the people and equipment. These metrics would never hold up in the long haul. It became a matter of how quickly we could train our air crews and maintainers and intelligence experts—an operation that comprises far more than just a pilot and a sensor operator.
For the MQ-1 Predator or MQ-9 Reaper, some 168 personnel are required to maintain each CAP, and that’s just for the airplane piece. In addition, there’s a whole backside for processing the collected data—dozens of people—imagery and signals analysts, intelligence advisors, mission controllers, senior commanders, military lawyers—all participating in the operations from twenty-seven networked and linked centers scattered around the world, exploiting and disseminating the data in real time over secure radio, satellite, and chat rooms. It is a global enterprise we call the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS), also known as the AN/CSQ-272 SENTINEL weapon system.
From its early inception, Air Force DCGS has evolved into an ISR operation capable of providing worldwide, near-real-time simultaneous intelligence to multiple theaters of operation. These centers (called distributed ground stations, or DGSs) consist of people and computers and communications that bring in the collected data and allow analysts to look at it, digest it, and turn it around to send it back out as finished intelligence. It’s a vast network that can support multiple ISR platforms in multiple theaters of operation simultaneously, from centers that may be located many thousands of miles away. This reduced forward footprint puts fewer airmen in harm’s way with no sacrifice in operational capability. While each DGS operates independently, the interconnectivity enables robust communication, data sharing, and resilience. If one DGS workload exceeds capacity, another DGS can assist in real time, providing seamless and uninterrupted mission execution. DCGS crews also rely on the expertise of partner distributed mission site crews normally collocated at National Security Agency locations—once again, fully networked and in real time.
This same level of partnership extends to the downrange teams that fly the aircraft. Whether it be the high-altitude manned U-2 Dragon Lady, the unmanned RQ-4 Global Hawk, or the multirole, medium-altitude MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper, the flight crews are integrated into the DCGS framework regardless of physical location.
In one particular instance, the DGS-4 DART (Distributed Common Ground System Analysis and Reporting Team), in communication with a forward deployed analytical team, received a tip from a reliable source that a terrorist cell was preparing to take action against blue forces. The DART knew their DGS crews would be executing missions in that area later that day and also knew a fellow Air National Guard DGS site was presently operating there. Via encrypted chat and other secure communications, the DART analyst pushed the intelligence tip to the respective DGS crews as well as the CAOC (Combined Air Operations Center) that was tasking these missions. Located in the Air Force Central theater of operations, the CAOC provides the command and control of airpower throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, and eighteen other nations. The Predator was subsequently redirected to the suspected terrorist assembly area where unusual activity was observed. As this was reported back to the ground elements, planning was under way to conduct operations against the terrorists. After operations were completed, the CAOC passed requests to the DGS-4 crew to get U-2 battle damage assessment imagery. DGS-4 imagery analysts were able to provide an immediate assessment and confirmation that the strikes were successful. The terrorist cell was eliminated, and Blue Force lives were saved.
Each day more than fifty ISR sorties are exploited, over 1,200 hours of full-motion imagery reviewed, over 3,000 signals intelligence (SIGINT) reports produced, 1,250 still images exploited, and twenty terabytes of data managed.
Strides were being made and lives were being saved. That’s a testament to the immense value of effective, actionable ISR, and to Secretary Gates for having the dogged determination and persistence to go to the mat to ensure that his commanders were provided with every possible resource to defeat our adversaries.
We continued to grow, and if anything, our pace actually accelerated. We supplemented our active duty elements with Guard and reserves. Our colossal locomotive was steaming faster and faster down the tracks. But as hard as we worked to hasten an already burgeoning expansion, the demand signal from the commanders was growing even faster. And it would grow infinitely if we let it. It culminated in a great debate: how much is enough? Between the SECDEF, his key staff, the Air Force, combatant commanders and their staffs, planners, and analysts—it seemed like everyone had a different opinion. The debate was lively as everyone lobbied passionately to advance their positions, both financial and operational. It embodied everything for which I’d been trained throughout my career, going all the way back to my time in the Plans Directorate—learning from Generals Gabriel, O’Malley, and Dekok. I relished the process and felt fortunate to have been afforded the opportunity to make such a substantial contribution to this new generation of warfare. Exciting times.
We collectively came to the conclusion that sixty-five orbits was a realistic goal, and that’s the number that the secretary directed us to meet—each providing 24/7 aerial coverage.
CENTCOM would still have first call, but our presumption was that if we built to sixty-five orbits (which would require around three hundred airplanes), that would allow prudent use of this capacity by other commanders at the same time; our supposition was that there had been lots of suppressed demand in other parts of the world where the commanders knew that if they asked, they would have been denied because of CENTCOM’s position of first priority.
When I arrived, there were between eight and fourteen orbits of a platform that was modestly backed by Air Force leadership. By the time I left, we had grown exponentially in terms of capacity and machines and personnel, and the technology had become a vital component of our Air Force arsenal, one that promises to play an even larger role in the decades to come.
The other aspect of the RPA story is that in instituting our “All In” commitment to meet this accelerated battlefield demand, we ended up freezing people in these crew and maintenance jobs for five years or more, and some people suffered as a result of this. For some, staying at Creech Air Force Base for years longer than they might otherwise had impaired potential career advancement. In addition, initially we had to take traditionally trained pilots from other weapons systems and reassign them to the RPA program. It was all coming to a head and we needed to make a fundamental decision: were we going to continue to operate remotely piloted aircraft with traditionally rated pilots, or was there some kind of tailored training program that was more appropriate to the remote pilot?
RPA pilots still have to have basic airmanship skills, and still need to understand aircraft performance, aviation geometry, and airspace. They need to understand interaction with air traffic control, command and control, and the air-ground interface. But there are other aspects of traditional military aviation that are not necessary in the remote piloting context—things like formation flight (at least for now) and aerial combat maneuvers.
We came to the conclusion that a six-month program specifically dedicated to training remote pilots seemed like a viable curriculum that made far more sense than borrowing pilots who had completed elev
en months of traditional flight training. We cut back on topics wherever prudent and maintained those that were tactically sound, and we stood up a dedicated training program for remotely piloted airmen to replace the traditional cockpit scenario.
Upon completion of the course, pilots were not only RPA certified, but they also became officially FAA-certified as private pilots. Having these piloting skills and experiences gives them a sense of airmanship, airspace geometry, and conflict avoidance that is integral to every aviation platform. It makes them better RPA pilots.
Following the basic RPA course, pilots attend specialized training in whatever platform they will be flying. There is a big difference in training requirements between Global Hawk—a large airplane used for surveillance only—and the more tactical birds, the Predators and the Reapers. Much like a traditional fighter pilot, Predator and Reaper pilots must become proficient in delivering weapons, understanding the weapon dynamics in terms of lethal ranges, approaching the target (taking into account direction, altitude, angle of attack), mastering how to ensure that the blast radius or ellipse occurs in a way that minimizes unnecessary loss of life and other collateral damage, and coordinating with ground elements to preclude the possibility of firing on friendlies.