Surveillance Surge
Air Force unmanned aircraft systems are providing vital ISR
information to forces on the ground in Southwest Asia.
by Tom Marlowe, MIT Correspondent
Images of the war effort in Southwest Asia frequently involve convoys moving down dusty roads, or warfighters engaging the enemy in grim urban scenarios. But while these images depict the valor and skill of U.S. and allied troops, ISR experts suggest they don’t tell the full story, in that those forces are often supported by the Air Force, which is providing intelligence, analysis, surveillance and even cover fire to the boots on the ground.
Take the case of a company pinned down in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom early in that war. Colonel Eric Mathewson, currently director of the Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Task Force, was flying a sortie with a Reaper UAS in support of the company, which came under fire by enemy forces. Working with a soldier carrying a Rover laptop, Mathewson was able to pinpoint muzzle flashes and enemy activity via the Reaper.
“We were able to identify where all of the enemy troops were and break up the attack,” Mathewson recalled. “We were able to reach back to base to obtain positive IDs on enemy weapons. We were then able to coordinate with the Air Ops Center to get some F-15Es to start heading our way to provide additional firepower.”
Meanwhile, the Reaper enabled the troops to determine that they were actually surrounded by about 100 enemy fighters and not simply taking fire from a single direction. But the jets arrived and provided close air support, breaking up the attack and putting enemy forces on the run. Air Force surveillance was able to follow their retreat, providing important intelligence for future operations.
“The combination of being able to communicate extremely rapidly, the persistent presence of our aircraft over the battlespace, and the tactics we have developed over time, which are enhanced by the Rover and the reachback into the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS), all of that comes together on a daily basis,” Mathewson remarked.
Mathewson also is personally familiar with a case about two years ago in Iraq, in which a Predator UAV was flying an ISR mission. The Predator was moving along a main highway north of Baghdad from one target of interest to another, when its sensors detected a possible hotspot on the ground. The Predator crew did not recall seeing the spot earlier, so they pulled up the Predator’s imagery from 45 minutes earlier.
After a quick check of the coordinates, Air Force analysts determined the same spot had not been there even 45 minutes previously. In a three-minute conversation, the analysts deduced they likely had a place where a fresh IED had been planted, and there was a convoy scheduled to travel along that highway at any time. They warned the convoy, sent a team to defuse the IED, and saved lives and time. “That time of thing goes on all of the time,” Mathewson declared. “Because of that process and the ability to connect with people very quickly, it took only a matter of minutes. It was a 10-minute period of time. That’s just one example of how ISR assets meet that goal.”
UAS BOOST
Mathewson started working with UAS systems first as the squadron leader of a Predator Squadron during Operation Enduing Freedom. He then moved into running the UAS program for Air Combat Command. He soon found himself serving as a group commander at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., home base to Predators and Reapers. He eventually ended up at the Pentagon, directing the task force on UAS systems.
Over that time, the use of UAS systems has grown dramatically in support of operations in the Middle East. Right after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Mathewson’s squadron flew two combat air patrols (CAPs). Now the Predator flies 27 CAPs along with other flights of the Reaper and the Global Hawk.
“Two and a half years ago, we were flying 14 CAPs, so we have grown from 14 CAPs, almost doubling it, in just two years,” Mathewson recalled. “That is remarkable when you think about the hours flown.”
This year, the UAS flights will exceed 120,000 hours in combat. That amount is 10 times what a traditional fighter unit would fly in a year. One vehicle flew only 48,000 hours two-and-a-half years ago.
In mid-August, the Air Force broke 400,000 hours of total flight time with Predators, which have been flying since 1995. But Predators, which carry the designation MQ-1, logged three-quarters of their total flight time within the last three years. Reapers, designated MQ-9, have experienced more than 28,000 combat hours in the past two years.
“Along the same lines, we have seen great growth on the training side,” Mathewson commented. “When I first went through training in 2000, we were running four classes a year. In each class, you had eight crews. So we were only putting through 32 crews a year. This year, we are on line to do 160. Once again, that’s incredible growth.”
The Air Force is putting everything it can into the fight as quickly as possible, Mathewson noted, and that includes personnel behind the scenes who conduct analysis and provide advice on intelligence.
“At the same time, they have been able to put forward more than 4,500 Rover sets, which is how we do line-of-sight dissemination. We are talking through the airplane via secure communications to the folks on the ground, but we are also sending them our video, which is an incredible combat enhancement,” Mathewson said.
ISR IN THE FIGHT
That record is noteworthy in light of the impressive amount of manpower goes into the operation of UAS systems. As Mathewson observed, “There is nothing unmanned about unmanned.”
Crews and analysts working on the receiving end of UAS imagery work diligently to get information to troops on the ground to boost their situational awareness. The capabilities of Air Force assets and those of other military agencies to interoperate and transmit information through ever-increasing bandwidth have fostered the growth of increasingly rapid and accurate ISR missions.
“The UAS epitomizes that net-centric approach to warfare in many ways,” Mathewson stated. “Your ability to talk to someone in a normal aircraft is often limited by what you can fit on that aircraft, what you can power, what systems you can cool, and those sorts of problems. With unmanned aircraft systems, that is not the case. You have this incredible plug-in to the larger matrix.
“The UASes of all classes—small, medium and large—have proven themselves in all of the hours they have flown in primarily in a support ISR role, but also in the close air support and strike roles as well,” Mathewson continued. “They have really truly proven themselves. The unfortunate reality of being at war has resulted in incredible applications of technology in the UAS area.”
Those applications have occurred not only in the exploitation and dissemination of information, but also through the ability to reach back through DCGS, a dynamic expression of net-centricity. UAS systems can transit full-motion video back to headquarters 8,000 miles away and tactical personnel in battle can receive information from that video through analysts with a click of a key or a Voice over IP conversation between personnel.
In addition, a few key attributes have really increased the utility of UAS systems in ISR missions. One of those attributes is persistence—not just via the technical capability of a Predator or a Reaper to stay on station, but also through the ability to swap out the crews operating them without degrading the mission.
“You can have persistence in the past, but say you were staying on station for 9 or 10 hours. After sitting in combat air patrol for 10 hours, you are pretty beat at the end of it. One of the cool things about the 1-G cockpit is that I can bring in a fresh crew, and that’s what we do,” Mathewson explained.
Today, UAS crews typically sit for four hours before they are swapped out for fresh personnel.
“You are not going away. Every aspect of the kill chain can be covered by one platform. You can find them, identify them, take whatever action is required, and provide an assessment at the end. Constant persistence is a significant attribute,” Mathewson said. Another significant attribute is the ability to quickly identify enemy forces and assets, particularly through the reachback capability DCGS provides.
“It really doesn’t matter where your controls are and it really doesn’t matter where your exploitation piece is,” Mathewson said. “What is critical is having the effect on the battlefield forward. The reachback part has opened up all of that net-centricity. We have learned how to communicate quickly, whether it is in chat rooms or voice over IP or other methods. The communication flow of information that is required to be on the battlefield at that moment to provide high situational awareness is virtually instantaneous.”
The ability to reach back and collate information from anywhere within the system to bring vital intelligence forward when it is needed is yet another significant attribute that the Air Force brings into battle.
But Mathewson cautioned that credit couldn’t simply be assigned to any one service in a battlefield accomplishment.
“More than ever, it’s really the joint fight,” he summarized. “The contributions are constant. You don’t have the concept of these well-defined boundaries on who does what and when we need you, we ask you. It is so much more integrated than that in everything we do. The question is largely an organizational one. Those boundaries just don’t exist.”
FUTURE ADVANCEMENTS
Every day, Mathewson and his colleagues ask if they are doing all they can to contribute to the success of the services’ missions.
Already, for example, the larger MQ-9 Reaper has been replacing the smaller MQ-1 Predator, both of which are manufactured by General Atomics. The Predator, which can carry about 300 pounds of external equipment, has a top speed of 120 knots, while the Reaper can carry 3,000 pounds externally and another 750 pounds internally and travels up to 250 knots.
The Predator can fly at altitudes up to 25,000 feet while the Reaper can reach 50,000 feet. The characteristics of the Reaper, therefore, make it more useful in more situations.
As such, Air Force research personnel can fit more hardware onto the Reaper. The Predator can put surveillance on an individual narrowly defined spot, while the Reaper can do so with 64 simultaneous spots through a technology called Wide Area Airborne Surveillance, which expands surveillance range. Because the MQ-9 can do more, it involves a smaller footprint than running the equivalent multiple Predator sorties at the same time.
“For UAS, our daily milestone is this: Are we doing everything we can to be successful in the mission? Are we doing everything we can to support the troops on the ground and our national defense strategy?” Mathewson said. “Virtually every day within the UAS world, we are searching for technology that might enhance, even by a minor increment, our abilities to go forward.”
In the past, when an aircraft would return from a reconnaissance mission, analysts would take the wet film from the vehicle, process it and file a report. Now information zips along the information pipeline in raw form and exploited form through the DCGS systems.
“Information is vetted through joint organizations. These actions aren’t just Air Force-centric. Everyone is part of the process. Everyone plays that joint role all the way through,” Mathewson commented. But the Air Force will keep looking for ways to move forward, such as with the development of a UAS roadmap for the Air Force, requested by the Secretary of the Air Force. The first draft is due in December. “A lot of it will look at what technology that’s out there that we can leverage and what technology that we envision developing from a strategic perspective,” Mathewson said.
