ID wrote an article early (and I mean it posted early...like around 1 or 2 am) about the US Navy losing the narrative battle to the USAF in regards to the Air-Sea Battle. Read it here but a few snippets.
Two problems occurred. First, unmanned aircraft development for the Navy in particular got sidetracked when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began wearing down F-18s faster than the Navy expected, and due to political pressure from Congress, not to mention practical problems with rapidly aging airframes, the Navy ended up having to spend a great deal of the aviation budget on replacing F-18 Hornets instead of innovating new unmanned aircraft. Second, the Littoral Combat Ship mission modules that focused on unmanned vehicles ran into serious development problems that have led to a complete restructuring of the mission module programs. Many of those technologies could not meet requirements, and as a result Navy leadership spends a great deal of time in public speeches emphasizing the necessity for mission power capacity to support new technologies like unmanned underwater vehicles.
The Navy doesn't have a Hornet replacement of any type ready to field today, and while a lot of investment in both the Joint Strike Fighter and the UCAS offers possibilities; these systems lack a narrative that overrides the uncertainty surrounding the programs. What will be the capabilities and limitations of both platforms, and will they compliment each other effectively has hoped? What does future ISR look like when surface combatants and submarines field unmanned systems, and what does the Littoral Combat Ship bring to the total battle network? Will these complicated emerging networks of systems be both reliable and credible, or will the network requirements be too vulnerable to stress and disruption in the future warfare environment to make many of these technologies useful?I don't know if the G man had word of the shoot down before I did, but one thing is certain.
He nailed it. The article is a little wordy and he goes into issues that focus on the Big Navy, but as far as UAV's and the Surface Navy is concerned, he nailed it.
This first combat deployment of rotary winged UAVs (I'm assuming US Navy warships) is a disappointment. At least in my eyes.
It also brings up a couple of interesting questions.
1. Are rotary winged UAVs more vulnerable than fixed winged UAVs?
2. Was the flight profile adequate? Did its mission profile place it in danger of being lost or is it more fundamental?
3. Is the idea of armed rotary winged UAVs an evolutionary dead end?
4. For naval warfare --- do manned helicopters just make more sense? MH-60's can be had for a song...should we dump the fashion of UAVs and concentrate on what we know works?
I don't know but the loss of this FireScout...for whatever reason...does not bode well for the future of these vehicles.
