Fancy Budget Footwork

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Aviation Week & Space Technology
April 28, 2008
Pg. 30
Defense plans revamped as political sparring intensifies
By David A. Fulghum and Amy Butler, Washington
A game plan is emerging as top Pentagon officials maneuver to meet the growing demand for airborne surveillance and intelligence-gathering generated by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There’s also an unanswered question about whether efforts to increase intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) spending may conflict with plans for advanced technologies needed to confront sophisticated foes of the future.
In public, Defense Secretary Robert Gates castigated “our services [for] not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield.” In particular he noted that getting a response to his call for additional ISR support has been “like pulling teeth,” during a speech Apr. 21 at the Air War College at Maxwell AFB, Ala.
At the same time, Pentagon acquisition chief John Young threatened to kill programs to fund more pressing efforts and to stay within budget limits. And there’s a long list of unfunded projects that Pentagon and industry officials want Congress to pay for outside the formal budget plan.
To take on the ISR issue, Gates established a new task force. “Speed of deployment and enhancement of operational capability should be the prime objectives,” Gates said in a private memo.
But Gates’s critical comments may be political theater as he tries to formulate an agenda that won’t be rejected by the next administration.
“I think Gates is setting up a debate to realign the Pentagon’s resourcing priorities, which may be a positive for [ISR] modernization,” says a senior aerospace industry official involved in surveillance programs. “It’s difficult to comment on the budget debate because so much political posturing is underway and it will continue into June. No doubt the Air Force would like the Hill to help fund ISR.” Congress could provide money in the upcoming Fiscal 2008 supplemental budget.
In fact, an ISR funding tidal wave already may be approaching.
Some of the programs expected to profit from this public display of angst are the newest Global Hawk Block 40 RQ-4 long-endurance UAV, the small version of the MP-RTIP active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, and upgrades to the venerable E-8 Joint Stars to include a 20.8 X 2.5-ft.-wide area surveillance version of the new radar. The larger advanced radar would be powerful enough to detect stealthy cruise missiles, to damage or scramble electronics with focused pulses of energy, and to detect ballistic missiles at ranges of 500 naut. mi. or more.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force is again scrambling to meet insatiable demands for additional Predator UAVs in Iraq and Afghanistan and for crews to operate them from U.S. bases. The service had planned to field 21 24-hr. orbits of UAVs by October, but the program has been accelerated. One military official says the 25th combat air patrol (CAP), consisting of four Predator vehicles and ground equipment, will be fielded by June 1, more than doubling what was in U.S. Central Command a year ago. USAF officials also stopped the rotation of Predator crews and boosted training to produce 160 crews a year. The latest request is for the Air Force to increase training to 240 crews a year.
The Air Force’s secretive Big Safari organization—which has rapidly developed and fielded advanced sensors and aircraft for decades—is pushing a Wide-Area Airborne Sensor (WAAS) electro-optical (and possibly infrared) focal plane array, which would provide streaming images akin to the “full-motion video” (FMV) from Predator that is in such great demand from ground commanders in Centcom. Gapfiller solutions, called Angel Fire and Constant Hawk, are providing products similar to streaming video. However, they require multiple electro-optical cameras placed on various points of the aircraft. The product is stitched together for a wide field of view.
The vision for WAAS is to try to field a single, staring sensor capable of providing variable refresh rates. Predator’s FMV operates at about 30 frames per second, which requires enormous bandwidth to transmit. With WAAS, commanders hope to tailor the refresh rate—some targets may only need one or two frames per second—and reduce the bandwidth demands. The large field of view would also allow ground commanders to call up data from one small grid of the total image collected, also reducing the amount of data that has to be transmitted. WAAS would also be capable of collecting infrared imagery at night, and include a direct downlink to soldiers via the Rover laptop computer-based system. WAAS has captured the attention of senior Pentagon leaders, who would like an additional $40 million in the second Fiscal 2008 supplemental request to accelerate the program, which could cost up to $400 million. Officials hope to field a sensor next year. The Air Force’s Reaper UAV is the likely choice to carry WAAS.
Last week Northrop Grumman won a $54.9-million Air Force contract to develop and flight test in May 2009 an airborne signals intelligence payload for the MQ-1 Predator (ASIP-1C) and to design a similar capability (the ASIP-2C) for the larger, faster MQ-9 Reaper. The capability is to be operational by 2010. The ASIP-1C is to be a scaled, modular derivative of the sensor developed for the U-2 and Global Hawk.
The company also snagged a $79.4-million award to build a 1.5 X 4-ft. version of the MP-RTIP radar for lot seven, Block 40 RQ-4 UAVs. An initial $33.89 million has been obligated to procure three of the sensors. First flight for Global Hawk with the new radar is slated for early next year, and flight testing of the Block 20 with its larger wings continues at Edwards AFB, Calif.
Northrop Grumman and Raytheon have sunk $1 billion into developing the larger version of the radar, which is being offered as an upgrade to the 17 E-8 Joint Stars aircraft. Air Force chief of staff, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, also called for a survey of U.S. aircraft—including the new KC-45 tanker platform—as possible platforms for the radar. But some Air Force officials were stunned by the idea of combining an aircraft full of fuel and the large, powerful emitter. They contend that refueling tracks and radar surveillance tracks are never in the same place. They also note that the current Joint Stars radar has to be shut down well before the E-8 approaches a tanker. “It’s one of those throwaway concepts that are discussed from time to time,” says a former commander of a Joint Stars unit. “It’s a bright idea that isn’t so bright.”
The MP-RTIP radar, more powerful Pratt & Whitney JT8D-219 engines and upgrades to computing and processing capabilities for Joint Stars are currently unfunded. One Air Force official says the omission of Joint Stars upgrades from the Fiscal 2010 budget plan is a calculated risk, since service officials know the program has a strong following in Congress.
“Issues with the 2010 [budget plans] are based on funding limits given to the services—ceilings they are to stay under,” a second aerospace industry official says. “Will [reengining and the large radar] survive? That depends on the timing of ISR recapitalization. These issues—if they’re not solved—could result in operational gaps before new ISR platforms are ready.” On the other hand, “this is typical of the positioning for 2010 budget planning that goes on during the process.”
The death of the Pentagon’s space-based radar also may help add urgency to plans for Joint Stars modernization.
“With [the space radar’s recent] cancellation, the hope of ground surveillance from space is off the table,” says the Air Force officer. That means the Defense Dept.’s ISR strategy for the big job of wide-area surveillance and battle management needs to be focused to ensure there’s no strategic gap. However, “development of the small MP-RTIP radar for Global Hawk doesn’t preserve the radar technology for [years until there is a Joint Stars follow-on aircraft],” he says. “They’re fundamentally different when it comes to technology, supplier and engineering levels.”
Northrop Grumman officials echo the call for rapid modernization of Joint Stars. They contend that unless the Air Force puts funding for the large version of the MP-RTIP radar into Fiscal 2010 budget plans, the technology will no longer be available and it would require at least $2.5 billion to develop a replacement program.
On the operational side, arguments for the radar are impressive. Northrop Grumman officials won’t discuss the big radar’s potential capabilities, but other radar specialists say divining them in a general way isn’t that difficult.
A key selling point is that the radar uses AESA technology invented for fighters such as the F-22, F-35, F/A-18E/F and EA-18G. The technology increases the range of fighter radars by about three times to a projected 125-150 naut. mi., depending on the size of the array.
The E-8 version of the MP-RTIP radar would be about 24 times larger than a fighter array. “A linear extrapolation is a reasonable first-order analysis of the radar’s capability,” says an aerospace industry radar specialist. And with new engines, the E-8 could operate 2 mi. higher to exploit the larger radar horizon. “If you model how a ballistic missile looks in boost phase, you can put in software loads so that when it breaks the horizon, even though it’s low and way the hell out there [500 mi. or more], you can still develop tracks on them.”
At the other end of the spectrum, the radar, because of its length, can track low-velocity targets—including walking troops. One rough example of the radar’s expected resolution is that it might not be able to track a soccer ball, but it could determine how many people were on the field playing the game.
 
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