Recall the 2006 QDR listed four capabilities necessary to win the Long War: persistent surveillance to find and precisely target enemy capa-bilities in denied areas; an ability to locate, tag, and track terrorists in all domains, including cyberspace; systems and organizations to help fuse intelligence and operations to speed action based on time-sensitive intelligence; and prompt global strikes to attack fleeting enemy targets rapidly. The range, persistence, stealth, and flexibility inherent in the N-UCAS design could offer a means to achieve each of these capabili-ties at the same time in the same platform, and could enable aircraft carriers to assemble very effective, specially-tailored airborne counter-terror networks.
Today, a propeller-driven system like the MQ-1 Predator UAV, which has approximately 20-hour endurance, can loiter over an area lon-ger than most platforms, but its persistence is hampered by its relatively slow transit speed and its inability to be refueled in-flight.333 Depend-ing on the distance from the Predator’s operatDepend-ing base to its operatDepend-ing area, and prevailing winds, actual mission-loiter can be quite limited.
Moreover, because it lacks low-observable design characteristics, the Predator is vulnerable to ground-launched air defenses. In contrast, with a refueled endurance of 50 hours (limited by jet-engine lubricant), and assuming a one-hour transit time to and from tanker orbit located nearby or over a target area, an N-UCAS could spend almost two days per mission loitering over an area of interest. Furthermore, due to the N-UCAS’s low-observable design and much higher operating speeds, it could operate effectively inside even the defended airspace of a state sponsor of terrorism for operationally meaningful periods of time by dashing in and out to a tanker operating at the tanker safe line.
333 The MQ-1 Predator’s slow transit speed becomes a strength when conducting real-time surveillance, as it can stay locked on a target with very slow changes in target aspect.
Disrupting terrorist networks with global reach demands improved man-hunting capabilities. These demands spurred the development of tagging, tracking, and locating (TTL) technologies, many of which can be monitored from long distances.334 Long-loiter unmanned aviation systems of all kinds, including the Predator, Global Hawk, and next-generation stealthy, unmanned aircraft like N-UCAS will likely be the platforms of choice for monitoring and tracking moving targets that have been tagged. The same logic pertains to the coming proliferation of very small, unattended ground sensors, which will require stealthy monitoring or relay of signals to distant monitoring stations. With its low-observable design and flexible mission bays, the N-UCAS would be the ideal system to covertly emplace and monitor a ground sensor grid, or to act as a remote relay of collected information.
Of course, Air Force experience with the Predator amply proves that, after uncovering a high-value target during man-hunting missions, having a surveillance-strike system overhead is far preferable to just a surveillance system. Being able to minimize the time between detecting the target, receiving authorization to attack, and delivering a weapon is vitally important for these types of fleeting targets. In this regard, an operational N-UCAS would be able to carry both a very capable onboard sensor system and up to 12 GPS-guided small diameter bombs. Clan-destine ground operatives, off-board sources, or the N-UCAS’s own on-board sensor systems could target these bombs, which can be used to attack both fixed and moving targets.335
Global man-hunting will also put a premium on multiple, net-worked systems loitering in the area of interest. The redundancy afforded by these collaborative networks becomes very important when human targets of interest take evasive action by dividing into various
334 Michael Vickers noted that, if implemented, initiatives proposed in the 2006 QDR could result in a substantial increase in TTL related to the Long War. Michael Vickers, “Implementing GWOT Strategy: Overcoming Interagency Problems,”
testimony before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, March 15, 2006. This testimony can be accessed online at http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/
T.20060315.ImplementingGWOT/T.20060315.ImplementingGWOT.pdf.
335 According to the military capability clearinghouse Global Security.org, “The GBU-39 variant of the 250-pound class bomb is equipped with an INS/GPS guidance system suitable for fixed and stationary targets. The GBU-40 second variant adds a terminal seeker with automatic target recognition capabilities more suitable for mobile and re-locatable targets.” See “Small Diameter Bomb / Small Smart Bomb,” accessed online at http://www.globalsecurity.org/
military/systems/munitions/sdb.htm on March 30, 2007.
groups—the so-called “squirter” problem. This requires the trailing sur-veillance-strike platforms to split up and follow multiple bearings (or to launch a sufficient number of loitering-guided submunitions). With tanker support, a single carrier with a 12-aircraft UCAS squadron could assemble and maintain a five-ship counter-terrorist surveillance-strike network up to 3,000 nm away from a carrier. When given the artificial intelligence to act cooperatively, as the Boeing X-45A recently demon-strated, this network could conduct collaborative hunts of terrorist tar-gets, splitting up as needed to follow as many as five individual groups.
In this endeavor, they would be aided by the same high-capacity data links and satellite communications currently planned for the F-35C.
Long range and persistence also pays off in other anti-terrorist activities such as counter-sanctuary operations, especially in remote areas. For example, Central Asia is likely to be an attractive future oper-ational theater for radical extremists and their terrorist allies. Nearly all of the nations in Central Asia suffer from weak governments and/or a lack of internal stability, conditions perfect for movements or organiza-tions seeking to establish an operational sanctuary. From the enemy’s perspective, another benefit derived from operating in this region is the lack of any major permanent, or even rotational, US presence.
Very few defense planners anticipated a major US conflict in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, and its geographical remoteness posed special problems for operations there. However, as challenging as that campaign was from the perspective of geographical access, other Central Asian nations present even more daunting access challenges, especially for naval aviation. For example, from operating areas in the northern Arabian Sea, the distance to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, is 900 nm. In comparison, from the same location, the capitals of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan are all 1,100 to 1,500 nm away. Should the United States someday find itself conducting another counter-sanctuary campaign in Central Asia, having an N-UCAS capable of delivering guided weapons strikes out to 1,500 nm without refueling would allow carrier air wings to participate in the earliest stages of any counter-sanctuary operation—without having to wait for supporting tankers or combat search and rescue aircraft to get into theater. Moreover, once air operations shifted from striking fixed targets to loitering over target areas in order to provide responsive strike support to US special operations or ground troops, and with land-based tanker support (operating out of Bagram, Afghanistan, for example), each N-UCAS squadron could indefinitely sustain five to
seven surveillance-strike CAPs over an Central Asia area of operations with very little stress on carrier launch and recovery operations.
Alternatively, the CVW could transfer its N-UCAS squadron ashore, and operate from a forward operating site like Bagram, Afghanistan, extending the system’s unrefueled reach deep in Central Asia.
Another region of weak governance and instability is Africa.
Unsurprisingly, then, radical Islamist groups are active in the Horn of Africa, and al Qaeda “franchises” are now sprouting up across the Sahel, the semiarid zone stretching across northern-central Africa that separates the Sahara Desert in the north from the tropical savannahs to the south. The nine Sahelian countries that comprise the region (Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauri-tania, Niger, and Senegal) are among the poorest in the world, and have loosely defined borders—perfect operating conditions for terrorists. As a result, Africa is considered an increasingly important theater in the Long War, as indicated by the State Department-funded Pan-Sahel Ini-tiative and the recent Department of Defense decision to create a new African Command (AFRICOM).336
The enemy knows that the remoteness and vast distances that characterize the Sahel make any sort of US surveillance or special oper-ations presence very difficult. However, the endurance of unmanned aircraft would allow AFRICOM, if need be, to establish a surveillance-strike presence over the entire Sahel in support of both man-hunting and counter-sanctuary operations. For example, three carriers, one oper-ating in the Mediterranean and one off both the east and west coasts of Africa, could sustain up to 15–21 N-UCAS surveillance-strike CAPs across the entire northern width of Africa. Once again, the combination of the N-UCAS’s longer range and endurance would allow the US carrier force to perform missions once assigned only to land-based aviation.
Another benefit of the N-UCAS’s range and endurance would be a sharp increase in carrier response times, which are now generally limited by the Carrier Strike Group’s maximum rate of advance of 30
336 See “Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI),” accessed online at http://www.
globalsecurity.org/military/ops/pan-sahel.htm. AFRICOM will not include Egypt, which will stay under Central Command, and is due to stand up on September 30, 2008. Vince Crawley, “U.S. Creating New Africa Command To Coordinate Military Efforts,” USINFO, February 6, 2007, accessed online at http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2007
&m=February&x=20070206170933MVyelwarC0.2182581&chanlid=af. Both websites were accessed on April 23, 2007.
knots. N-UCAS, with a cruising airspeed of 450 knots and a refueled endurance of 50 hours or more, could serve as a new type of airborne
“flying squadron.” If, for instance, a brewing crisis in Nigeria prompted the Secretary of Defense to order a US carrier to the Gulf of Guinea from its home port in Norfolk, with en-route tanker support (poten-tially from the Azores), the CVW could theoretically launch a long-range N-UCAS surveillance sortie on the very day it left port. As the carrier closed to within 3,250 nm, it could assemble and maintain five surveil-lance-strike CAPS over Nigeria or the Gulf of Guinea; at 1,700 nm, the number would climb to six, and at 500 nm, it would climb to seven. At that point, the full power of the CVW would come into play. This type of responsiveness would qualify aircraft carriers and their CVWs as true global surveillance-strike systems, capable of augmenting the opera-tions of Air Force long-range bombers. Of course, both would be highly dependent on forward tanker support.
An N-UCAS could also pioneer new ways to conduct old naval mis-sions. Imagine, for a moment, that a state or non-state terrorist group began waging guerre-de-course against commercial shipping in South-east Asia or inside the Malaccan Strait. The numerous islands and cor-responding chokepoints in the area would provide operational bases for the terrorists while also channeling shipping traffic, facilitating terrorist surveillance and target selection. Moreover, the group could attack at times and places of its own choosing. The traditional means to tackle this problem would be to surge large numbers of Coast Guard and/or Navy vessels into the area and to escort ships through the danger zone. However, with their combination of range and endurance, Navy BAMSs and N-UCASs could be used to establish a persistent counter- terrorist network, enabling quick responses to attacks against commer-cial vessels. Cargo ships, container ships, and tankers transiting the area would “check in” with the network coordinator during their passage through the area, under the watchful surveillance of an orbiting BAMS.
Ships with extremely high-value cargos might then take aboard a mili-tary support officer. If the ships are approached by a suspicious vessel, these officers could call in an N-UCAS for a detailed, real-time visual observation of the threat. And, if the ship is fired upon or threatened by boarding, the armed N-UCAS could potentially destroy the attacking vessel. Obviously, this scheme would require carefully developed rules of engagement agreed upon by neighboring countries. However, under favorable circumstances, such a counter-terrorist network could serve as a powerful deterrent against attacks and favorably influence shipping companies’ willingness to transit dangerous waters.
As this short discussion suggests, then, the N-UCAS could add a new, flexible, and potentially highly effective capability to the US counter- terrorist portfolio.