Operations, Maintenance and Logistics Support for Unmanned Aerial Systems—For every 35 cents spent on military acquisition programs, 65 cents go to pay for the massive requirements for infrastructure, personnel, maintenance, repairs, sustainment and upgrades of weapon systems. War expenditures and urgent procurement needs have made it vital for the military to manage this “tail” of its activities efficiently and cost-effectively. The U.S. Department of Defense is taking steps to do this in part by entrusting contractors with life cycle management or even ownership of assets; and by reducing depot or other organic capability while outsourcing overhaul, upgrades or logistics support to private industry. The task of providing operations, maintenance and logistics (OML) support for military systems is made more difficult by the services’ growing proportion of aging defense assets – as well as by the flood of highly technical, complex new weaponry that is entering the military’s inventory.
A conspicuous example of the latter trend is the explosive growth of unmanned aerial systems (UASs). In the skies over Iraq, the number of these robotic aircraft has jumped to more than 1,000 in just the last few years – and providing support for these indispensable new warfighting systems has become a critical addition to the military’s OML mission. Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Technical Services Sector is a leading defense industry provider of OML support for a variety of unmanned aerial systems.
Requirements for OML Support of Unmanned Systems
There are nearly a dozen UAS varieties in service – including, for instance, the U.S. Air Force’s Global Hawk and Predator; the U.S. Army’s Hunter, Shadow and Raven; and the U.S. Marine Corps’ Dragon Eye and Pioneer. The requirement to support these sophisticated high-technology systems, even as the population of skilled military personnel trained to deal with them is shrinking, is a key reason the services seek assistance from contractors.
These defense industry experts perform a number of OML functions in support of UAS missions: they train military pilots and sensor operators; operate, maintain and upgrade UASs; and provide supply and other kinds of support relating to these aircraft.
They also contribute valuable analytical studies of OML requirements and impacts, modeling how UAS operations generate maintence and supply needs and how, in turn, maintenance and supply performance affect UAS operations. The analyses can predict, for various scenarios, the operational readiness and performance of UASs, the effectiveness of maintenance and supply, and the cost of operations and maintenance.
Contractor involvement in UAS support has also been encouraged by unique aspects of these systems’ operations. Some of the aircraft – Global Hawk and Predator, for example – have been deployed into combat well in advance of reaching their initial operating capability. In these situations, contractor support is the economically most feasible option for meeting the OML requirement – because the services normally do not begin to assign personnel to the first operational unit for a new weapon system until that asset is nearing completion of developmental test and evaluation.
It is likely that contractor assistance will continue to be needed for early phase deployments of UAVs, given the current emphasis on spiral development of successive upgrades that will each require testing in the field.
Another factor contributing to the use of contractors is the development of new CONOPS that favor this outside support – a good example is the Air Force’s use of reachback, the practice of having UASs deployed overseas but operated by pilots back in the United States. The military favors this long-distance operating approach (which relies heavily on contractor support at the U.S. locations) because it reduces the pre-deployment training requirement for service personnel and also the the logistical footprint in theater.
Capabilities Needed: Northrop Grumman’s Breadth of Support Offerings
At present, the military services obtain OML support for their UASs mainly from the same companies that developed the systems. Thus, for example, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. supports the Predator; The Boeing Company supports the Navy and Marine Corps’ ScanEagle; AAI Corporation (a Textron subsidiary) supports Shadow; AeroVironment Inc. supports the small UASs Raven and Dragon Eye; and Northrop Grumman Corporation supports Hunter, Global Hawk and Fire Scout.
Northrop Grumman is one of the world’s most experienced providers of life-cycle services for UASs. The company’s UAS support organization is part of a larger Life Cycle Optimization and Engineering Group (LCOE) that works to manage and sustain America’s defense systems across their life cycles, from production and operational support to maintenance and ultimate disposal.
LCOE has operations and field service personnel working across the United States, with major locations in California, Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri, Maryland, Ohio, Louisana and Georgia. Field service personnel also support military customers in theater and around the globe at 18 international locations.
Hunter
LCOE’s largest OML effort for UASs is its provision of complete life-cycle support to the Army’s Hunter aircraft. The RQ-5A Hunter was that service’s first UAS, fielded in 1996 – and today’s next-generation Hunter, the MQ-5B, continues this legacy program.
Northrop Grumman is currently operating the Army’s Government Owned, Contractor Operated facility that supports the Hunter’s deployment in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), where this workhorse UAS recently surpassed 60,000 flight hours in service, with over half flown in combat.
Northrop Grumman’s OIF unit is based at Camp Speicher, near Tikrit. Because of its extensive experience operating and maintaining Hunter, the unit is able to provide assistance in these and other activities using considerably fewer people than are normally assigned to them by the Army.
Flying Hunter over the battlefield, the Northrop Grumman team gathers reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition (RSTA) information in real time and relays it via video link to commanders and soldiers on the ground. Many missions involve day and night monitoring of much traveled Army convoy roads where improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted by insurgents are a major threat to soldiers.
David Harvey (left), editorial director of the
Shephard Group, presents the Defence
Helicopter Magazine award for 2006 Integrator
of the Year to Major Chisholm (center) of the
U.S. Army and Jim Perry, director and Hunter
UAV program manager, Northrop Grumman.
“When the team locates insurgents inserting an IED,” explains Jim Perry, Northrop Grumman’s program manager for Hunter. “One response is for the UAS to provide lasing support to helicopters engaging the enemy. The lasing enables helicopters to fire Hellfire missiles at the target from a considerable distance, before their large audio signatures have warned the enemy that an attack is coming.”
The Hunter team can also engage the insurgents directly if the UAS is equipped with the Viper Strike weapon – a highly-accurate Northrop Grumman-developed precision munition that causes minimal collateral damage. For Viper Strike missions, however, Northrop Grumman’s operational role is strictly limited. As Perry notes, “The actual engagement of the target is the responsibility of soldiers that we’ve trained as pilots.”
The company’s support of Hunter goes beyond operating the UAS to ensuring that enough of these aircraft are available: at the time of the system’s initial deployment to Iraq, there was a shortage both of the next-generation MQ-5B aircraft and of the Army’s System One ground control stations that are used with the UAS. To remedy the deficiency, Northrop Grumman created a hybrid aircraft for temporary use by modifying the legacy RQ-5A model with the addition of new heavy fuel engines and a wet (i.e., fuel carrying) extended center wing. The company is now replacing this hybrid, the MQ-5A, with the new MQ-5B aircraft, a substitution soon to be completed.
The U.S. base for Northrop Grumman Technical Services’ Hunter-related activities is its Unmanned Air Vehicle Center of Excellence in Sierra Vista, Arizona. There the company modifies Hunter RQ-5A models to MQ-5Bs – and also integrates new MQ5Bs. In addition, the center is a one-stop shop for Hunter support, providing depot-level maintenance, supply warehousing, all necessary spares, engineering, integration and test capability, and soldier training for operating and maintaining the aircraft.
“Here at Sierra Vista,” Perry says, “we do the Army reset of assets that come back from OIF beat up by the 135 degree heat and by sand as fine as talcum powder that permeates everything. Our dedicated force of professionals brings these systems back to their original condition of readiness.”
At the Sierra Vista Center, Northrop Grumman also continually upgrades the Hunter to keep it abreast of Army requirements. For instance, the company is developing an automatic take off and landing system for the aircraft, which will soon undergo final flight testing.
According to Perry, “Training external pilots to fly the aircraft is time-consuming and expensive – and it’s also very hard on the aircraft because of accidents that inevitably occur during instruction. So it makes sense to eliminate the need for such training by having a system that makes take offs and landings automatic.”
In a number of projects, Northrop Grumman is now working not only with the Army’s program management office of unmanned systems but also with the service’s Intelligence and Security Command, or INSCOM, which has recently become the cognizant command for the Airborne Exploitation Battalions that include Hunter (and also Guardrail, another Northrop Grumman-built surveillance aircraft).
One particularly important effort the company is pursuing with these two customers is aimed at making Hunter and all the other Army UASs interoperable using a common ground control station and a common data link. Northrop Grumman is eager to help the Army succeed in this endeavor not only because it will yield tremendous operational improvements but also because it will greatly reduce logistics costs.
Global Hawk, Fire Scout
Other Northrop Grumman-built UASs are also supported by the company’s LCOE Group.
Global Hawk, the Air Force’s high altitude long endurance surveillance UAS that has logged more than 10,000 combat flight hours in the Global War On Terrorism, is part of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing based at Beale AFB, California. Northrop Grumman’s support of this UAS does not, as in the case of Hunter, include flying the aircraft – the company’s main job is to train pilots and sensor operators. Another key responsibility is providing the Air Force with expert field support for the aircraft and its ground systems and data links.
Northrop Grumman also manages the U.S. Navy’s Global Hawk activity, the Maritime Demonstrator (MD) program at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Maryland. This program gives the Navy a means of developing concepts of operations and tactics, techniques and procedures for its Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) program – a future Navy program for a fleet of sensor-bearing UASs recently won by Northrop Grumman.
The Northrop Grumman team assigned to the Navy’s MD program is involved in maintaining the UAS, carrying out launch and recovery missions, flying the aircraft and operating the sensors. “This team,” Perry points out, “has done a terrific job and received many accolades from the Navy brass for their input to the CONOPS and tactics, techniques and procedures processes.”
At Webster Field, Maryland, Northrop Grumman has another group that flies and maintains the Fire Scout Vertical Takeoff and Landing Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle system. This UAS is being developed and flight-tested for its planned future service aboard the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship, now under development. Additionally, LCOE supports the Army’s logistical requirements for the Future Combat Systems’ Class 4 Fire Scout UAS.
Finally, the company has a team of engineers providing support to the EuroHawk program. In January 2007, the German Ministry of Defense awarded a contract to Euro Hawk GmbH, a joint-venture company formed by Northrop Grumman and EADS, for the development, test and support of the Euro Hawk unmanned signals intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system. Northrop Grumman’s LCOE Group contributes significant expertise to this program.
Support For Future UAS Fleets
Many military strategists call unmanned aircraft the wave of the future. A recent study by the aerospace and defense consultancy Teal Group concludes that UAS spending worldwide likely will double over the next decade to $4.5 billion annually, totaling more than $30 billion for the period.
“In this growing market,” says Perry, “we see a number of opportunities for our UAS support business.
“With Fire Scout,” he predicts, “our growth path will be along with the Navy’s mission as they begin to introduce more units into the fleet. I suspect we will provide some of our experts to sail with various ships that have Fire Scout deployed and will also have these people support Navy repair stations that have the aircraft onboard.”
Because Beale AFB is the training base for all the Global Hawk operators in the Air Force, it is anticipated that training demands will grow at that location as Global Hawk operations are extended to overseas bases – the Air Force is currently planning for additional bases in Guam and, perhaps, Sicily.
Additionally, of course, Northrop Grumman’s win in the Navy’s BAMS competition should open up significant opportunities for OML support of Global Hawk aircraft for that service.
“As for Hunter,” says Perry, “we expect to work with INSCOM to introduce the UAS into one or both of the Airborne Exploitation Battalions where it is not currently resident. In addition, we know that Hunter is going to continue require support for some time. Eventually the Army’s Extended Range/Multi-Purpose UAS program will produce the Warrior aircraft to replace Hunter; but this change is likely to happen only gradually.”
Additional growth in Northrop Grumman’s Hunter support program may come from foreign business. Some of America’s NATO allies, including Romania and Belgium, have legacy UAV systems they want to have upgraded. Northrop Grumman is also considering how this Army system may satisfy some of Canada’s UAS requirements for use in Afghanistan and other areas.
“No matter where in the world Hunter and our other highly-valued UASs see service,” says Perry, “Northrop Grumman will keep them performing excellently and efficiently with our unrivalled breadth and quality of OML support, our deep understanding of customer requirements, and our strong commitment to vital security missions.”
There are nearly a dozen UAS varieties in service – including, for instance, the U.S. Air Force’s Global Hawk and Predator; the U.S. Army’s Hunter, Shadow and Raven; and the U.S. Marine Corps’ Dragon Eye and Pioneer. The requirement to support these sophisticated high-technology systems, even as the population of skilled military personnel trained to deal with them is shrinking, is a key reason the services seek assistance from contractors. 
Contractor involvement in UAS support has also been encouraged by unique aspects of these systems’ operations. Some of the aircraft – Global Hawk and Predator, for example – have been deployed into combat well in advance of reaching their initial operating capability. In these situations, contractor support is the economically most feasible option for meeting the OML requirement – because the services normally do not begin to assign personnel to the first operational unit for a new weapon system until that asset is nearing completion of developmental test and evaluation.
LCOE’s largest OML effort for UASs is its provision of complete life-cycle support to the Army’s Hunter aircraft. The RQ-5A Hunter was that service’s first UAS, fielded in 1996 – and today’s next-generation Hunter, the MQ-5B, continues this legacy program. 
Global Hawk, the Air Force’s high altitude long endurance surveillance UAS that has logged more than 10,000 combat flight hours in the Global War On Terrorism, is part of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing based at Beale AFB, California. Northrop Grumman’s support of this UAS does not, as in the case of Hunter, include flying the aircraft – the company’s main job is to train pilots and sensor operators. Another key responsibility is providing the Air Force with expert field support for the aircraft and its ground systems and data links. 
At Webster Field, Maryland, Northrop Grumman has another group that flies and maintains the Fire Scout Vertical Takeoff and Landing Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle system. This UAS is being developed and flight-tested for its planned future service aboard the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship, now under development. Additionally, LCOE supports the Army’s logistical requirements for the Future Combat Systems’ Class 4 Fire Scout UAS. 
Because Beale AFB is the training base for all the Global Hawk operators in the Air Force, it is anticipated that training demands will grow at that location as Global Hawk operations are extended to overseas bases – the Air Force is currently planning for additional bases in Guam and, perhaps, Sicily. 