By Loren Thompson
Unmanned aircraft (“drones”) have captured the popular imagination. Hardly a day goes by without a story appearing somewhere about how unmanned aircraft will revolutionize everything from commercial logistics to air combat.
It’s a seductive idea, and probably true to some extent. In the unforgiving world of military planners, though, what matters most is how the available options for conducting missions perform today, not what might unfold tomorrow. One such mission is intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – what the military calls ISR. Detailed, timely information about tactical conditions is indispensable in deterring or defeating enemies, so much of contemporary military debate revolves around how best to collect, analyze and share such information.
The U.S. Air Force has been struggling of late to determine whether manned or unmanned aircraft are best suited to generating useful intelligence on the modern battlefield. Its two most capable options are the manned U-2S spy plane, which traces its lineage to the early days of the Cold War, and the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft – by far the most capable intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drone in the world.
Air Force
U-2 flies higher, flies faster, carries more payload, and generates more power than unmanned alternatives. It also performs better in bad weather and contested air space.
At its inception 20 years ago, Global Hawk was viewed as the coming thing, the epitome of military transformation in the digital age. U-2, on the other hand, was viewed as a vestige of an earlier era in warfighting – very good at what it did, but destined to be eclipsed by high-flying drones that could stay aloft much longer.
Things haven’t quite worked out that way. Sure enough, the Global Hawk offers exceptional endurance. In fact, it holds the Air Force record for continuous hours of flight without refueling (34 hours). However, once you get beyond how long the unmanned option can stay up there, the U-2 turns out to be superior in virtually every other measure. As a result, the Air Force has recently decided to kill plans for its retirement, and keep using U-2 in places like Korea and the Persian Gulf indefinitely.
I should mention that Lockheed Martin, which originally built the U-2 at its secretive Skunk Works in California, is both a contributor to my think tank and a consulting client. But all the performance features detailed below can be easily checked in publicly available sources, so you don’t have to take my word for any of it. What the data show is that U-2S is by many measures the most capable ISR plane any nation operates, and decidedly superior to Global Hawk. For instance:
– U-2 can fly two miles higher than Global Hawk (70,000 feet versus 60,000 feet), and thus look much deeper into enemy territory.
– U-2 can carry two-thirds more payload (5000 pounds versus 3000 pounds), and thus collect more types of intelligence on each mission.
– U-2 generates nearly twice as much electricity (45 kVA versus 25 kVA) for powering onboard sensors and other equipment.
– U-2 operates far more effectively than Global Hawk in bad weather, giving it a higher mission-success rate (97%).
– U-2 is far more survivable in contested air space than Global Hawk, thanks to having a human pilot aboard.
– U-2 is much less dependent than Global Hawk on external links that might be severed by jamming or cyber attacks.
No doubt about it, having Global Hawk’s ability to stay airborne for 30 hours can be very useful in some tactical environments. However, when you factor in U-2’s greater sensing range, bigger payload, superior survivability, high reliability and intrinsic flexibility compared with Global Hawk, it turns out to often be a better match for the mission requirements of regional commanders than the drone. Having a pilot in the cockpit, as opposed to sitting at a console thousands of miles away, can make a big difference.
One reason U-2S performs as well as it does is that it isn’t really a Cold War plane anymore. Almost all the planes in today’s fleet were built in the 1980s, and are about 40% bigger than the original design. A new General Electric engine was installed in the 1990s, and the cockpit was subsequently upgraded with digital displays. In fact, despite sometimes being described as “venerable,” today’s fleet still has three-quarters of its fatigue life remaining, and could easily operate through mid-century.
More to the point, the existing fleet of 32 U-2 spy planes is fully engaged worldwide. If the planes aren’t deployed overseas, they are being used on training missions at home. So there isn’t much evidence that regional commanders are eagerly shifting their ISR missions to drones. Senior Air Force officers have frequently been quoted comparing U-2 sensor performance favorably with that of Global Hawk.
Which brings me back to the Air Force’s dilemma in trying to determine which type of airframe is better suited to emerging ISR requirements. At various times over the last several years, the Air Force has proposed retiring both the Global Hawk and the U-2. But that choice was driven by tight budgets rather that operational merits, because it is obvious that in some cases the long endurance of Global Hawk is needed, and in others the performance advantages of U-2 are more critical. In other words, the joint force needs both aircraft.
Maybe unmanned aircraft are destined to dominate the battlespaces of tomorrow. The Air Force is operating stealthy drones that are more survivable than Global Hawk, but few details about those airframes have been disclosed publicly. What can be said for sure is that there are still many circumstances in which manned ISR planes like the U-2 are useful, and it makes sense to keep refreshing the technology on those legacy aircraft until the day comes in the distant future when something better is fully fielded and available on short notice.
No comments:
Post a Comment