Saturday, October 21, 2006
USAF Considers U-2 UAV
An interview featuring Secretary of the Air Force, Michael Wynne aired on CSPAN, October15th, 2006. In that interview Wynne said that the program to enable the Global Hawk to replace the U-2 Dragonlady has been delayed by Congress.
The original timetable set in 2005 was to have the USAF's 33 U-2's retired by 2011. The issue seems to be that the Global Hawk is not yet able to do all that the U-2 can. Apparently the GH cannot deliver the same quality of broad area synoptic imagery that the U-2 can.
These static photos taken from as high as 90,000 can cover an enormous area with intricate details of troop placements, with subsequent passes showing direction of troop movement. This is a feature that satellites can not provide either. Satellites passing over an area of interest can only show a smaller area in each shot and then the follow-up shots taken on different passes (read at differing times) must be put together like a mosaic.
One of the problems facing the USAF concerning the U-2 is persistence and loiter time over the area of interest. The extreme conditions of flying at 70-90,000 feet limits how long a pilot can fly the aircraft.
"One of the things that we find is... the airplane can outlast the pilot." said Wynne, he then noted that the USAF is looking into ways of extending the flight time of the U-2, and one option being considered is to "automate the U-2", or make it an unmanned vehicle.
Source:
US Air Force considers pilotless U-2; UPI
Read or Post a Comment
...which will probably lead to two platforms with the same mission and capabilites.
It could do that, but it's an obvious attempt to fill the technological gap between the U-2 and the Global Hawk until such time that the GH has the same ability as the U-2.
How many GHawks are there now anyway? 15? Of those, how many are even to Blk.10 standard? 7? Two others are with the USN for BAMSE and IIRR, one was effectively bailed back to NorGrumman for Blk.20 configuration testing.
How many U-2s were there built, even not including the original 30 A's? 15 Rs and about 25 TR-1s sound about right?
There's 32 odd Dragon Ladies in the inventory now. And to get them to even /close/ to an operational standard fit for the 21st century means yet another DECM and 'situational awareness' upgrade which means more power off the common electrical backbonee (already at peak with all the sensor routings) and probably another upgrade to the environmentals.
Even then, the jet is not an overflight gambitable system so much as a standoff ELINT platform as the slants are just not there to go into truly contested airspace with a baby onboard.
As the GHawk routinely did in PGW3.
Pull the flight controls when you pull the mutant under glass and the replacement automation and gas to even come /close/ to matching the GHawks endurance and flight modes will mean a veritable money pit of yet more FLCS and airframe mods.
For all of 32 airframes.
The GHawk has been threatened with cancellation, twice (with AF passive encouragement) because it is 'up to 25% over budget' yet as I recall, the 1994 guarantee on cost was not more than 10 million dollars per airframe and 50 million for total mission package (GCS etc.).
25% for EITHER of those numbers is a pittance and certainly not one to be brought back into line by 'dividing equally' the current budget share going to another platform.
Given we bootstrapped what should have effectively been FSD prototypes into war and NEVER PAID BACK the development cycles for the system. The GHawk should not be considered an inefficient so much as coopted platform that needs to get back on the treadmill of wringing out the total package on an IN PRODUCTION airframe.
Comparitively, the U-2 doesn't have the LO to exceed the GHawk's penetrability factors with the same sensor systems leverage.
It doesn't have the endurance to match persistence over the theater area on a given radius-out profile.
It's so called 'synoptic' capabilities are NOT the equal of either overhead or the H-Cam/NIIRS suites for resolution and image stability so the ability to 'see major troop movements as a real time integer rather than mosaic' is about as honest (in comparison with equivalent SAR data) as it is likely to be needed against podunk-X threat with all of 10 technicals and 100 men at their command.
As such, the only real U-2 advantage, inherent to the F118 and absolute ceiling, goes right out the window.
Leaving only the obvious inherent to yet another manned community crying on Congress' shoulder to continue the 'tradition' of corruption as an assurance of piloted-force commitment to wasted money. Rather than admitting openly that it's _time_ to move the funding into an arena where it can do the most good.
That platform being the RQ-4 as a continuation of block upgrades across a sufficiently diverse fleet to 'spiral on' the capabilities as they are developed through a _properly funded_ evolutionary path with a DELIBERATE INTENT of procuring as many as 100 airframes to increase our NA monitoring force back towards a threshold level approaching what could be called useful.
Do this and we may yet see the first chink by which cockpit airpower uber alles is brought low as the obvious pilot-centric bigotry it should rightly be seen as from the very beginning.
In God We Trust. Everyone Else We Monitor.
Can't happen if you think at the micro inventory level which is what is REALLY driving the program economics of this nation's intel gathering capability towards a poverty of assets.
32 jets just ain't enough to make up the difference, even if they WERE all that.
KPl.
How many GHawks are there now anyway? 15? Of those, how many are even to Blk.10 standard? 7? Two others are with the USN for BAMSE and IIRR, one was effectively bailed back to NorGrumman for Blk.20 configuration testing.
How many U-2s were there built, even not including the original 30 A's? 15 Rs and about 25 TR-1s sound about right?
There's 32 odd Dragon Ladies in the inventory now. And to get them to even /close/ to an operational standard fit for the 21st century means yet another DECM and 'situational awareness' upgrade which means more power off the common electrical backbonee (already at peak with all the sensor routings) and probably another upgrade to the environmentals.
Even then, the jet is not an overflight gambitable system so much as a standoff ELINT platform as the slants are just not there to go into truly contested airspace with a baby onboard.
As the GHawk routinely did in PGW3.
Pull the flight controls when you pull the mutant under glass and the replacement automation and gas to even come /close/ to matching the GHawks endurance and flight modes will mean a veritable money pit of yet more FLCS and airframe mods.
For all of 32 airframes.
The GHawk has been threatened with cancellation, twice (with AF passive encouragement) because it is 'up to 25% over budget' yet as I recall, the 1994 guarantee on cost was not more than 10 million dollars per airframe and 50 million for total mission package (GCS etc.).
25% for EITHER of those numbers is a pittance and certainly not one to be brought back into line by 'dividing equally' the current budget share going to another platform.
Given we bootstrapped what should have effectively been FSD prototypes into war and NEVER PAID BACK the development cycles for the system. The GHawk should not be considered an inefficient so much as coopted platform that needs to get back on the treadmill of wringing out the total package on an IN PRODUCTION airframe.
Comparitively, the U-2 doesn't have the LO to exceed the GHawk's penetrability factors with the same sensor systems leverage.
It doesn't have the endurance to match persistence over the theater area on a given radius-out profile.
It's so called 'synoptic' capabilities are NOT the equal of either overhead or the H-Cam/NIIRS suites for resolution and image stability so the ability to 'see major troop movements as a real time integer rather than mosaic' is about as honest (in comparison with equivalent SAR data) as it is likely to be needed against podunk-X threat with all of 10 technicals and 100 men at their command.
As such, the only real U-2 advantage, inherent to the F118 and absolute ceiling, goes right out the window.
Leaving only the obvious inherent to yet another manned community crying on Congress' shoulder to continue the 'tradition' of corruption as an assurance of piloted-force commitment to wasted money. Rather than admitting openly that it's _time_ to move the funding into an arena where it can do the most good.
That platform being the RQ-4 as a continuation of block upgrades across a sufficiently diverse fleet to 'spiral on' the capabilities as they are developed through a _properly funded_ evolutionary path with a DELIBERATE INTENT of procuring as many as 100 airframes to increase our NA monitoring force back towards a threshold level approaching what could be called useful.
Do this and we may yet see the first chink by which cockpit airpower uber alles is brought low as the obvious pilot-centric bigotry it should rightly be seen as from the very beginning.
In God We Trust. Everyone Else We Monitor.
Can't happen if you think at the micro inventory level which is what is REALLY driving the program economics of this nation's intel gathering capability towards a poverty of assets.
32 jets just ain't enough to make up the difference, even if they WERE all that.
KPl.