MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Master Sgt. Robert Shepherd)
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Defense.]
By Dan Goure
Real Clear Defense
U.S. Army Aviation is poised for a transformation even more profound than that which introduced the Black Hawk and Apache helicopters four decades ago. The focus of attention has rightly been on the products of the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) effort: the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) and the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA).
But equally important for the future of Army Aviation is the development of advanced unmanned aerial systems (UASs) or drones and long-range precision munitions to equip both FVL platforms and legacy aircraft. These small drones, called Air-Launched Effects (ALE), will be an essential component of the revolution occurring in Army Aviation. These low-cost, relatively long-range drones extend the speed, reach, vision, and lethality of the Army’s aerial fleets.
A future high-end conflict with Russia or China will be a fast, intensive, and highly lethal combat environment. Our adversaries have built an integrated anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) infrastructure designed largely to counter areas of U.S. advantages, deny U.S. forces the ability to operate within their adversaries’ weapons engagement zone, and threaten those U.S. platforms and systems that seek to close within range of their opponent.
According to the U.S. Army’s concept for Multi-Domain Operations, Countering this threat will require capabilities to penetrate and disintegrate the enemy’s A2/AD structure, destroy critical assets, and exploit the gaps created in the enemy force structure. To accomplish these objectives, the U.S. Army needs, among other capabilities, advanced manned and unmanned aerial systems with a number of advanced capabilities. These include longer ranges, greater speeds, the ability to operate close to the ground, connectivity to other platforms, sensors and weapons, autonomy, and greater lethality.
Army Aviation is at a historic pivot point. It needs to recapitalize on its existing fleets of helicopters based largely on forty-year-old technologies. To this end, the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program is focused on developing a new generation of manned platforms, FLRAA and FARA. Both of these platforms will have greater speed, range, loiter time, connectivity, and maneuverability than existing military helicopters.
To fully exploit the inherent capabilities of FLRAA and FARA and enhance the effectiveness of legacy aerial platforms, the Army requires a new generation of air-launched drones and weapons. These new payloads will further extend the reach, speed of engagement, and lethality of Army Aviation. A key to future aviation operations inside an adversary’s A2/AD network will be the ability of Army Aviation platforms to find, fix, and destroy targets from outside the engagement ranges of hostile air and missile defenses.
A relatively unrecognized part of the FVL modernization program is the effort to develop a family of multipurpose UASs or ALEs to equip both the FVL platforms and legacy helicopters. Equipped with a variety of payloads, the ALEs will extend the range at which manned platforms can see, engage, degrade, and even destroy targets.
The FVL is looking to exploit advances in aerostructures, compact power plants, sophisticated sensors, robust communications networks, and electronics to develop a family of relatively low-cost ALEs that can carry interchangeable payloads, all of which can be deployed from a common launcher, likely a utilitarian truck. The key will be in individual payloads, including sensors for surveillance and target tracking, electronic jammers, and cyber weapons to undermine air defenses and lethal warheads. ALEs may also serve as communications nodes, creating a swarming network that an adversary will find difficult to interrupt.
According to published reports, the Army is looking at two classes of ALEs. The small ALE will weigh between 50 and 100 pounds, fly at 30 knots over a distance of one hundred kilometers. The large ALE will weigh between 175 and 225 pounds, fly at 70 knots for up to 350 kilometers. Improved versions of both the small and large ALE will see these performance parameters increase by between 50 and 100 percent.
FVL aircraft fly at up to three hundred knots and can loiter for an hour or more. When equipped with ALEs that can further extend the battlespace by 100 to 350 kilometers, they would create an enormous set of dilemmas for an adversary’s integrated air defense. An adversary would have to confront the problem of massed ALEs degrading communications and sensor networks and collecting targeted information for U.S. long-range precision strike systems, helicopters, and manned aircraft.
In order to ensure that the ALE concept works, the FVL CFT has adopted the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) across its portfolio. MOSA establishes a set of standards and design practices that ensure maximum commonality across systems and their various components. Using MOSA, ALEs will be able to host any available payload, deploy from a common launcher, use a common control system, and share communications networks.
ALEs are at the heart of the Army’s belief that it can create a cost-reducing strategy to help defeat an adversary’s integrated air defense. Swarms of relatively cheap ALEs will confront an adversary with the dilemma of having to expend expensive air defense munitions to defeat each aerial target.
The FVL CFT demonstrated the basic features of an ALE at several recent events. At this year’s Experimentation Demonstration Gateway Event 2021, the Army launched a swarm of Altius drones and operated them up to 60 kilometers from the launching aircraft. During the recent Project Convergence 2021 field experiments, the Army demonstrated the ability to launch ALE-like weapons from both air and land platforms and operate them alongside manned aircraft. Raytheon Technologies recently demonstrated the use of a variant of the company’s Coyote counter-UAS system in the role of an ALE.
The FVL CFT has cast a wide net in its ALE development efforts, funding a mix of approaches involving both traditional OEMs and non-traditional defense suppliers. Last year, the CFT let ten relatively small contractors develop ALE vehicles, payloads, and payloads. Among the winners were major defense companies such as Raytheon, L3Harris, and Leonardo Electronics U.S., and smaller, non-traditional defense companies such as Area-I, are also playing.
Dan Gouré, Ph.D., is a vice president at the public-policy research think tank Lexington Institute. Gouré has a background in the public sector and U.S. federal government, most recently serving as a member of the 2001 Department of Defense Transition Team. You can follow him on Twitter at @dgoure and the Lexington Institute @LexNextDC. Read his full bio here.
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Defense.]
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