Delays in US Navy UCLASS Carrier-Based Drone

June 4, 2015

US Navy sees possible risks in delay in competition for carrier drone

U.S. Navy officials this week voiced rare dissent with the Pentagon over a long-delayed competition for a new armed, carrier-based drone that could be worth billions of dollars to industry, and said the U.S. Defense Department’s foot-dragging posed risks to the Navy’s future aviation forces.

Rear Admiral Mike Manazir, director of air warfare for the Navy’s chief of naval operations, on Wednesday said the Navy’s requirements for the new unmanned aircraft had been locked in for well over a year, but the Navy could not release the terms of the competition until the Pentagon completed its study.

Manazir echoed growing frustration voiced by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus during a speech at a Washington think tank on Tuesday.

Boeing, Northrop Grumman Corp, which makes the X-47B unmanned, unarmed plane that has been tested on U.S. carriers, Lockheed Martin Corp, and privately held General Atomics have spent tens of millions of dollars to prepare for the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance Strike (UCLASS) tender.

But the program - one of just a few new aircraft programs up for grabs for contractors - has been on hold pending a Pentagon-wide review of intelligence and surveillance programs that has stretched on much longer than expected.

Navy officials say they worry that further delays will put the U.S. military at a disadvantage versus potential enemies like China, which are rapidly developing their own drones.

“We’re going to fall behind on the benefits for having an unmanned attribute inside the air wing,” he said. “That’s where I’m frustrated - when something’s ready to go and … it advances our war-fighting capability why wouldn’t you?”

Mabus told the American Enterprise Institute the Navy sees the planned drone as a bridge to a next-generation strike fighter.

But Representative Randy Forbes, a key member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the drone would be “a bridge to nowhere” without a comprehensive plan for how unmanned planes would integrate into the overall carrier air wing in coming years.

Forbes and other lawmakers say they don’t want the Navy to proceed with the current plan for the drone because it is too focused on staying airborne for a long time to conduct surveillance, and not enough on developing an aircraft that could penetrate deep into enemy territory with a big load of bombs.

Manazir said the Navy was studying the option of doing more testing with Northrop’s X-47B in the interim instead of retiring the experimental planes - a move backed by some lawmakers.

Mabus told the American Enterprise Institute that raised questions about how to keep working on that particular platform without giving its manufacturer, Northrop, “a huge advantage” in some future competition.

Analyst Loren Thompson from the Lexington Institute said budget pressures and lack of consensus about the Navy’s needs could lead to the demise of the overall UCLASS program.