Drones / UAV

THOMAS NEWDICK - The Drive a écrit:

Air Force's MQ-9 Reaper Drone Replacement Requirements Now Include Air-To-Air Combat Capability

The Reaper’s successor should be able to defend both high-value manned aircraft and itself, in a high-end battlespace, according to the Air Force.

The  U.S. Air Force has released its latest request for information as it sets out more requirements for the replacement for its MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle, a program now dubbed MQ-Next. The new document indicates that the service is looking at a future drone that will feature defensive counter-air capabilities to protect high-value manned aircraft, such as tankers, as well as potentially fly red air aggressor missions.

The request for information (RFI) from the Air Force Materiel Command, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) was recently published on the U.S. government’s contracting website beta.SAM.gov. A previous RFI, released last June, focused on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike capabilities for the MQ-9 replacement, which the Air Force hopes will offer reduced operating costs and greater persistence, survivability, and range. While the latest RFI doesn’t mention MQ-Next by name, it does explicitly state that the information sought is related to the replacement of the MQ-9.


MQ-9 Reaper

Now, with the Air Force having gathered the information it needs on the aforementioned Next-Gen ISR/strike capabilities, the scope of the RFI has been expanded to what is being termed Next-Generation Multi-Role Unmanned Aerial System Family of Systems (Next-Gen Multi-Role UAS FoS).

The RFI acknowledges that the Next-Gen Multi-Role UAS FoS may be attritable or expendable, unlike the Reaper, as well as, or as an alternative to being survivable and reusable. The document also confirms that the Reaper’s replacement will be tailored for Great Power Competition — suggesting it will be expected to go to war in the kinds of highly contested environments encountered during a conflict with a peer rival such as China or Russia, in line with the demands of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. At the same time, the UAV is also intended to fly missions in permissive environments, too.

As a result, the new combat drone will have to take on additional missions compared to today’s Reaper, including air-to-air, base defense, electronic warfare, and moving target indicator surveillance against assets in the air and on the ground. What is more, the drone is to be designed from the outset to operate as part of the Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) network. The Air Force has already worked with air-to-air-capable armed drones Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS)-related exercise, as you can read about in this previous story. ABMS is the Air Force component of what the Pentagon now calls JADC2.

The RFI also references what sounds very much like the Air Force’s “Digital Century Series,” in which smaller numbers of manned aircraft are produced quickly to meet dynamically evolving threats.

“A continuous rapid development pipeline will be leveraged by which new capabilities are designed, prototyped, demonstrated, and fielded on a recurring basis to adapt to the ever-changing operating environment and integrate the latest emerging technologies,” the RFI explains.

Within all this, the Air Force has identified particular capabilities or mission packages known as “on-ramps.” The latest RFI is concerned with on-ramp one, which includes two capability subsets: Air Domain Awareness and High-Value Airborne Asset Protection (HVAAP).

Air Domain Awareness is further described as Focus Area and consists of sensors or sensor networks to provide early warning, tracking, and identification of enemy air operations. The RFI mentions low-cost radio-frequency, infrared, and electronic support measures (ESM) among “the multitude of different sensor capabilities” that could fulfill these requirements. Since these tasks are required to be conducted in highly contested and contested environments, the communications suites that will allow integration within JADC2 will have to be suitably resilient, the RFI states. There is also a requirement for data-sharing between multiple UAS as well as with off-board sensors on other platforms.

Focus Area is the High-Value Airborne Asset Protection, or HVAAP, set. This is where the Air Force sets out its requirement for a drone that is able to fight back, above all providing defensive counterair to protect HVAAs like aerial refueling tankers or standoff reconnaissance planes against long-range enemy fighters and “other kinetic and non-kinetic threats.” While adding infrared-guided air-to-air missiles to drones is not new for the Air Force, the RFI includes a much wider range of options for this role including, but not limited to weapons, sensors, electronic warfare, and directed energy weapons.


An MQ-9 armed with an AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles

Until now, U.S. drones armed with air-to-air missiles have flown mainly in less-contested environments, in very limited circumstances. Providing a UAV with the means, kinetic or otherwise, to defend a friendly airborne early warning and control aircraft, for example, in high contested airspace is clearly a significant challenge. The drone should also be able to defend itself. Therefore, perhaps, the RFI includes options for both HVAAP solutions that can be integrated onto a UAS or what it describes as “complete UAS platform solutions.” The latter suggests a dedicated air-to-air-capable combat drone as part of Next-Gen Multi-Role UAS FoS.

In the past, Boeing has pitched its Airpower Teaming System developed for Australia as an escort for high-value aircraft types, among many other roles. In this way, it would free up manned fighters for other frontline missions and would provide a defensive ring around some of the most vulnerable, but also most critical aerial assets.

It is worth noting, too, that last year General Atomics revealed a previously unknown unmanned aircraft concept, called Defender, that is intended to be capable of air-to-air combat and mid-air refueling. The company said at the time that its primary mission would be to protect “high-value airborne assets.”


Concept artwork for the General Atomics Defender unmanned aircraft.

It is as an extension of this HVAAP role that the RFI identifies a possible red air aggressor mission for the drone. This reflects previous suggestions that future U.S. drones could help bring down the cost of the entire red air training enterprise, reducing the requirement to procure more expensive manned aircraft and teach the instructors required to fly them. You can read more about that aspiration here. Furthermore, aggressor drones of this kind could potentially also replicate enemy drone swarms, mimicking the kinds of capabilities that some of the United States’ potential enemies are working on.

Focus Area reiterates that the Reaper’s successor or successors could be attritable, expendable, survivable, and/or reusable. It also notes that the Air Force desires rapidly reconfigurable payloads — implying, perhaps the kind of modular payload options available in the Boeing Airpower Teaming System — and interoperable software/hardware. Finally, the Next-Gen Multi-Role UAS FoS should be able to operate “autonomously, with minimal dependence on operator inputs.”


The first flight of the Boeing Airpower Teaming System.

Overall, the RFI emphasizes, to a significant degree, the requirement for the future drone to operate in highly contested environments, including anti-access/area-denial scenarios, and therefore suggests an aircraft that will be packed with robust communications links to ensure a flow of data between the drone and other platforms in real-time, as well as least some degree of low observability. The Air Force also says it wants more endurance — the basic Reaper can fly for around 20 hours unarmed, or more than 12 hours with weapons. In the case of the MQ-9B version, with an extended wingspan, flight endurance can be increased to more than 40 hours.

An enhanced level of automation is also a cornerstone of the Next-Gen Multi-Role UAS FoS requirement, which ties in with wider Air Force efforts under the Skyborg initiative. Under this effort, no fewer than 13 companies are already competing to help develop different technologies that could go into “loyal wingman” type unmanned aircraft and autonomous unmanned combat air vehicles. The service hopes to begin work on a drone using Skyborg’s AI technologies before the end of the year.

Then there is the important cost factor, with the RFI seeking drone technology that is “not too cost-prohibitive to enable the [Air Force] to field an inventory that can withstand anticipated attrition and achieve desired outcomes with critical combat mass.”

The Air Force wants to achieve all these ambitious goals quickly, too, under what it calls a “Speed to Ramp” initiative. If all goes to plan, the RFI says that a capability should be fielded before “the 2026/2027 timeframe.” Aviation Week Defense Editor Steve Trimble considers this to refer to the HVAAP set, which could potentially be integrated on existing drones by this time. Subsequently, it seems that this and other solutions that will emerge from the Next-Gen Multi-Role UAS should be integrated on a next-generation unmanned aircraft “in the 2030 timeframe.”

MQ-Next started out looking at ISR/Strike.

A new RFI refocuses the concept initially on ideas for fielding a counter-air system by 2026-27 on existing UAS to defend vulnerable, large manned aircraft. Same capability on next gen UAS to follow in 2030.https://t.co/2z5vnQaZGY pic.twitter.com/qw37EVpemW

— Steve Trimble (@TheDEWLine) March 8, 2021

It has not yet been established what kind of acquisition strategy will be used to get the new drones to their operators. However, the Air Force says it wants to emphasize “maximizing multiple competitions, to include the aerial platforms, ground control systems, sensors, and data exploitation technologies that nest within open-architecture standards.”

In terms of manufacturers, Northrop Grumman is just one of those known to have put itself forward for MQ-Next, and you can read much more about that company’s thoughts on the program in this previous in-depth interview with their vice president of program management. Lockheed Martin and General Atomics have also announced their interest and there will likely be more to follow.


A Northrop Grumman concept for a possible MQ-Next

In the meantime, however, we are still awaiting hard requirements for the MQ-Next, so it is far too early to say what kind of form the drone, or drones, might take. It could end up being entirely attritable, or recoverable, or somewhere in between. Similarly, while we now know the Air Force wants it to have an air-to-air capability, the degree of survivability that it may embody could range from all-aspect low observability to what is essentially a non-stealthy, missile-packing loyal wingman. For now, we just don’t know, but there is also a strong likelihood that the requirement will ultimately be for multiple types of systems able to address all these points.

Despite these limitations, the latest RFI does at least provide a glimpse into some of the kinds of UAV capabilities the Air Force wants to field in the most-too-distant future. Again, it also points to the recognition that the Reaper’s replacement will have to be much more survivable and capable in order to take a more central role in a conflict against an advanced peer-state foe.

Citation :

Drones Vs. Drones: Lockheed MORFIUS Uses Microwaves To Kill Swarms

3 - 4 minutes

Air Warfare, Pentagon
The tube-launched MORFIUS in flight. (Lockheed Martin)

The tube-launched MORFIUS in flight. (Lockheed Martin)

ALBUQUERQUE: To fight the growing danger of hostile drones, Lockheed Martin is offering MORFIUS, a drone armed with a High-Powered Microwave (HPM) to zap UAV swarms out of the sky. MORFIUS is a reusable drone that can fit inside a six-inch diameter launch tube and weighs less than 30 pounds, light and versatile enough to attach to ground stations, ground vehicles, or aircraft.

Presenting as part of the AUSA’s Global Force Next conference, the company outlined why, exactly, it sees microwave weapons as a nearly future-proof answer to a rapidly evolving threat.

“We’re focused on how we address the counter-UAS swarm threat,” said Brain Dunn, of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. Lockheed Martin really believes, he continued, “that an airborne delivered HPM effect really has an opportunity to make a big difference against the counter-UAS swarm flight that we’re going to be facing in the future.”

Working as part of a layered approach to counter-drone defense, MORFIUS units will be launched at hostile drones, or drone swarms, and then disable them in close proximity, with potentially a gigawatt of microwave power — or, as Lockheed put it, a million times the power of a standard 1,000-watt microwave oven.

Asked about the feasibility of a small flying machine carrying enough battery for such a burst, Lockheed refused to get into specifics, instead simply saying that the power comparison was favorable to ground systems. This is possible because MORFIUS can fly close to its targets and blast them with microwaves at close range – unlike ground-based systems, whose microwave emissions lose energy as they cross longer distances.

Crucial to the promise of MORFIUS is its ability to zap many drones at once in mid-air, far from the friendly vehicles, buildings, or people actively being defended.

“You have to engage the target before it gets to its ordnance release line, if it’s a kinetic effect, or if it’s an electronic attack, or defeat it before it can employ its ISR capabilities,” said Dunn.

Part of what is driving the counter-drone arms race is the tremendous growth in capability among cheaper uncrewed flying vehicles in use by both civilian and military fields. At the presentation, Becca Schwartz, who leads strategy for Lockheed Martin Counter-UAS, pointed to, among other things, the spectacular displays of drone swarms in the Olympics as an example of just how much commercial tech can offer for potential terrorist or military swarming.

“Accessibility to the hobbyist means that it’s accessible to the adversary,” said Schwartz.

The widespread availability of cheap and capable drones means that they are available to unconventional adversaries as much as near-peer competitors. And because drone evolution is increasingly driven by the fast-paced and fast evolving commercial market, it can be hard for counter-measures to keep pace with commercial tech or security innovations. A microwave is as close as electronic warfare comes to brute force, frying electronics rather than bypassing them. It’s a payload that, if proven successful in the field, could keep pace with the threat for years to come.

https://www.defenseworld.net/news/29295/China_Tests_Unmanned_Drone_Swarm_Carrier#.YG9GtS17Ro4 a écrit:

Francis Fukuyama a écrit:

Droning On in the Middle East

Back in the early 2010s when I first started playing with drones, I speculated in the FT that if I could own a drone, anyone could, and that this would have big implications for global politics. At that time, drone technology was largely controlled by the U.S. and Israel, but I noted that it was inevitable that it would spread widely and change the nature of interstate conflict. The specific use I imagined was for targeted assassinations, and Henry Sokolski recently speculated in these pages that they could be used against critical infrastructure like nuclear power plants. Neither of these threats has emerged big time as of yet, but the global landscape has already been changed by military drones.

The main actor in this development is Turkey under its autocratic president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The country has developed its own domestic drones and has used them to devastating effect in several recent military conflicts: Libya, Syria, in the Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in the fight against the PKK inside its own borders. In the process, it has elevated itself to being a major regional power broker with more ability to shape outcomes than Russia, China, or the United States.



Turkish drones like the Anka-S were developed by the Turkish aerospace industries firm TUSAS, while the Bayraktar TB2 was developed by the defense industry firm Baykar Makina, led by MIT-educated drone designer Selçuk Bayraktar, who was to later marry Erdogan’s daughter. The impetus to create a domestically-produced drone was driven by the U.S. military embargo in 1975, and Washington’s reluctance to sell the country its advanced Predator and Reaper drones. Turkey bought Heron drones from Israel, but found that relationship problematic as well. Drones are, however, not that hard to manufacture, and the most recent Turkish ones are quite impressive. The TB2 can stay aloft for 24 hours, and can perform both reconnaissance and attack missions.

The effectiveness of these weapons was first demonstrated beyond Turkey’s borders in Syria in March 2020, where in retaliation for a Russian-backed Syrian attack that killed 36 Turkish soldiers, Ankara launched a devastating attack on Syrian armored forces that were moving into Idlib province along the Turkish border. Video footage showed them destroying one Syrian armored vehicle after another, including more than 100 tanks, armored personnel carriers, and air defense systems.



The Syrian offensive was brought to a complete halt, and Idlib province secured as a haven for refugees. Then in May, Turkish drones were used to attack an air base in Libya used by UAE-backed Libyan National Army of General Khalifa Haftar, which ended the LNA’s offensive against Tripoli. Finally, during the Nagorno-Karabakh war in September, Turkish drones intervening for Azerbaijan against Armenia destroyed an estimated 200 tanks, 90 other armored vehicles, and 182 artillery pieces, forcing the latter to withdraw from the territory. This has become a point of nationalist pride in Turkey, as this pro-Azeri video suggests.

It seems to me that Turkey’s use of drones is going to change the nature of land power in ways that will undermine existing force structures, in the way that the Dreadnaught obsoleted earlier classes of battleships, or the aircraft carrier made battleships themselves obsolete at the beginning of World War II. Combined arms land forces of the sort that defeated Iraq twice in the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars are built around tanks, whose primacy was due to the fact that for many years, only a tank could destroy another tank. One of the little-known facts about the 1967 Middle East War was that only a couple of Egyptian tanks were killed from the air in Israel’s massive opening air strike, because it was too difficult to hit so small a target with an airplane. In the intervening years, precision-guided munitions began to proliferate, making the targeting of tanks much easier, but they still required expensive platforms like the A-10 close-support attack aircraft, which in turn necessitated expensive air defenses to operate against a sophisticated opponent.

Drones have now changed this picture substantially because they are relatively cheap, hard to defeat, and don’t risk the lives of human pilots. Militaries around the world are scrambling now to figure out how to defend themselves against drones, and it is not clear who will win the arms race between drones and drone counter-measures. But it is possible that the world saw its last massive tank battle during the 2003 Iraq War.

Drones have done much to promote Turkey’s rise as a regional power in the year 2020. The country has now decisively shaped the outcomes of three conflicts, and promises to do more of the same. The Middle East, which looked like it was being polarized along Sunni-Shia lines led by the two primary antagonists Saudi Arabia and Iran, is in fact more genuinely multipolar. Turkey has not aligned itself permanently with anyone. It has opposed its fellow Sunni powers, the Gulf States, in Libya; simultaneously sided with Russia by buying the latter’s S-400 air defense system while attacking Russian forces in Syria; and has refused to align its aims with Washington despite its continuing membership in NATO. Yet it has also sold TB2 drones to Ukraine, which might help unfreeze that conflict.

This has had some good consequences. Turkey’s intervention in Syria defeated what would have been a genocidal act against the refugees who had sought shelter in Idlib province. Had Assad succeeded in retaking the province, he would have provoked another massive refugee crisis with big implications for Europe. It's not clear the world would be better off had Gen. Haftar occupied Tripoli. On the other hand, Turkey’s intervention in Nagorno-Karabakh created a massive refugee crisis for Armenians. The multi-sided nature of Middle Eastern conflicts makes them harder to solve, and is one reason why the Syrian civil war is still raging after nearly a decade.

Many American critics of U.S. drone policy are still living in a world where the U.S. and Israel were the main users of this technology. But that world has already disappeared and is quickly giving way to one in which drones become central battlefield weapons. What that will look like in ten years’ time is anyone’s guess.

francis fukuyama

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/chinas-ch-6-armed-reconnaissance-uav-development-breaks-cover a écrit:

Naval News a écrit:

Left: Naval Group’s 4,000-ton trimaran “Ocean Avenger” Drone Carrier Warship has two straight runways to launch UCAVs with VTOL rotorcraft stationed at the stern. “Ocean Avenger” also has a main gun turret and VLS cells for missiles in addition to four 30mm autocannon turrets at the corners of the trimaran. Right: BAE’s 8,000-ton UXV Drone Carrier Warship uses two split-V runways to launch UCAV aircraft. Spots on the stern and forward deck are reserved for unmanned VTOL rotorcraft while the floodable well deck can launch unmanned surface and subsurface systems. UXV carries offensive and defensive VLS missiles and a 155mm gun with the possible addition of larger Hypersonic missile tubes. UXV is stated to be 500-feet long, or the length of the upcoming U.S. Navy’s FFG-62 FREMM-modified frigate .

https://www.defenseworld.net/news/29529/U_S__MQ_9_Drone_gets_Deadlier_with_New__Ghost_Reaper_Pods_#.YJUe7y27iCQ a écrit:

https://www.defenseworld.net/news/29560/China_Demos_Drone_guided_Helicopter_launched_Missile_Attack_on_Maritime_Targets#.YJwZCi27jEY a écrit:

JOSEPH TREVITHICK - The Drive a écrit:

How General Atomics Is Going All-In On Making Its Drones Relevant In A Peer-State Conflict

General Atomics drones are gaining the ability to launch unmanned aircraft in mid-air, new self-defense options, and other advanced capabilities.

General Atomics has revealed a new small drone design that can be launched in mid-air from the MQ-9 Reaper, the company's flagship product, as well as its MQ-1C Gray Eagle. The disclosure of this unmanned aircraft, the name of which has not been released, but that is in development now, is part of a larger vision for how the MQ-9 and MQ-1C could be employed in the future, including in support of higher-end conflicts. In addition to acting as unmanned motherships for smaller drones, there are also efforts underway to improve their self-defense capabilities and expand their mission sets.

General Atomics' Aeronautical Systems, Inc. division, or GA-ASI, released concept art, seen above and below, featuring the unnamed drone along with other materials it provided as part of the 2021 Special Operations Forces Industry Conference (SOFIC), which began on Monday and wraps up today. This annual event is being hosted virtually for the second year in a row due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.


An artist's conception of an MQ-1C Gray Eagle carrying, among other things, a previously undisclosed smaller unmanned aircraft capable of being launched in mid-air.

"This rendering represents the first public look at one of our new, unannounced prototypes, which has been in development for some time and is really a remarkable addition to the product line," C. Mark Brinkley, the Director of Strategic Communications & Marketing at GA-ASI, told The War Zone. "As a whole, our sUAS/ALE family of systems presents a great opportunity to extend the capabilities of the MQ-9 and MQ-1C for the future fight."

Though he could not provide detailed specifics about the drone, Brinkley said that it was one component of "a family of small UAS," or unmanned aircraft systems, which also includes Sparrowhawk and General Atomics' entry into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) LongShot program. Sparrowhawk is another small drone designed to be launched and recovered in mid-air, which you can read more about here. LongShot is exploring concepts for air-launched unmanned systems armed with air-to-air weapons that could extend the reach of the platform employing them.


General Atomics's Sparrowhawk, which is designed to be both launched and recovered in mid-air, seen under the wing of an MQ-9.

From what we can see in the artwork, the newly unveiled small drone design has a front-mounted propeller, pop-out wings, and a v-tail, and also appears to have some low observable (stealthy) features. Its general form and function do appear similar to Sparrowhawk, which also has a v-tail, but has a different pop-out wing configuration and propulsion system.


Close-up looks at the newly unveiled General Atomics small UAS design as seen in the concept art released for SOFIC.

The MQ-1C artwork also shows that drone flying together with a pair of Area-I Agile-Launch Tactically Integrated Unmanned System (ALTIUS) 600 drones. GA-ASI has already demonstrated the ability of the Gray Eagle to launch the ALTIUS-600 in flight and the U.S. Army has been actively using these drones as part of work on its Air Launch Effects (ALE) program. Brinkley said that the family of General Atomics drones that includes the newly revealed design is also "sometimes known as air-launched effects."

The goal of the ALE program is to develop a family of smaller drones that can be launched from larger manned or unmanned aircraft and that are capable of working together as networked swarms to perform various missions, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), electronic attack, and even lethal strikes. You can read more about the ALE effort here. The Army has also been using the ALTIUS-600 to explore the potential for deploying ALE systems from the ground and the U.S. Air Force has also air-launched at least one of these drones from an XQ-58A Valkyrie's internal payload bay.


US Army personnel launch an ALTIUS-600 from a DAGOR ultra-light vehicle during an exercise.

"Army Futures Command (AFC) has identified a future fight in an Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS)-rich environment where platforms must be survivable, attritable, or expendable to deliver sensing capabilities effectively where 1) The MQ-1C Gray Eagle flies racetrack patterns tangential to the IADS threat, at 80 km [~50 miles] distance, 2a) ALEs deploy from the MQ-1C Gray Eagle as the forward most element of the advanced team in areas of expected enemy contact in order to detect, identity, location and report (DILR) and attack/disrupt/decoy threat assets to initiate disintegration of the IADS," according to an official 2020 Army contracting notice. The word "attritable" that is used here refers to platforms that, while not explicitly expendable, are low-cost enough where they could be employed in areas where it would otherwise be less palatable sending more expensive 'exquisite' designs.

The concept of operation General Atomics envisions for employing the unnamed smaller UAS from the MQ-9 is very similar to these stated plans from the Army. "Our larger aircraft can transport these small UAS systems thousands of miles into the operational area, and provide the long-range sensors needed to identify potential targets of opportunity," Brinkley explained.

"Once identified, the small UAS can swoop in for a closer look, provide positive ID, and then track hostile actors," he continued. "That data is passed back to the MQ-9 or MQ-1C, which has the robust communications suite necessary to transmit that data anywhere in the world where the information is needed. As a team, the large/small UAS combo will be a key element for targeting, intelligence, reconnaissance, and networking across the future combat spectrum."

GA-ASI has also made clear that it sees MQ-9s and MQ-1Cs deploying smaller drones as key to how those platforms will able to support operations in more contested environments during future higher-end conflicts, just like the Army does. The Reaper and the Gray Eagle were designed originally more with operations in permissive airspace in mind and have been shown to be vulnerable even to lower-tier air defense capabilities.



"By employing these smaller UAS, Reaper and Gray Eagle operators will be able to penetrate, disintegrate and exploit anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) air defenses, and support operations in any domain," Brinkley added, though, of course, any such penetration would be indirect. "Meanwhile, the greater standoff afforded by these smaller UAS increases the survivability of the larger aircraft by placing them outside the kinetic range of tactical surface-to-air missiles."

These small drones are just one of a number of efforts to reduce the vulnerability of the Reapers and Gray Eagles, as well as give them additional mission sets, to help ensure their relevance going forward. The concept art of the MQ-1C carrying one of the newly disclosed UASs also shows that aircraft equipped with a new self-protection pod that GA-ASI has been working. The company had announced in January that it had finished a flight test demonstration of this system, which it had developed under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with SOCOM, on the MQ-9.

The pod has built-in radar warning receivers, as well as an AN/AAQ-45 Distributed Aperture Infrared Countermeasure (DAIRCM) system. The AN/AAQ-45 uses an array of electro-optical and infrared sensors to detect and track incoming missiles, and can then employ a laser against threats that employ infrared seekers to blind and confuse them, throwing them off course. The podded self-defense system also has a countermeasures dispenser that can release decoy flares, chaff, and the BriteCloud expandable radio-frequency decoy. That latter countermeasure, which you can read more about here, is used to lure away radar-guided missiles.

As part of the materials it provided for SOFIC, GA-ASI also released artwork depicting an MQ-9 equipped with the self-defense pod, as well as an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile. The U.S. Air Force has been exploring arming its Reapers with these air-to-air weapons for self-defense and potentially other roles, including knocking down incoming cruise missiles.


An artist's conception of an MQ-9 Reaper equipped with the self-defense pod and armed with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile, as well as other weapons and stores.

The concept art of the MQ-9 launching two of the smaller UASs also shows that Reaper fitted with a Scalable Open Architecture Reconnaissance (SOAR) pod under its right wing and a Rosetta Echo Advanced Payload (REAP) under its left wing, both of which are also GA-ASI products. SOAR is a signals intelligence suite that "provides identification, geolocation and characterization of RF Signals of Interest (SOI) for the formation of Electronic Order of Battle," according to General Atomics' website. REAP is a communications and data-sharing system.


An infographic showing various payloads General Atomics has or is developing for the MQ-9, including the SOAR and REAP pods.

REAP underscores another potential future role for the MQ-9, as a communications and datalink gateway node. GA-ASI says that this pod "provides the foundation for an Open Mission Systems (OMS) capable communications gateway (ABMS building block)." An open-architecture system is one designed to be readily adaptable and upgradeable to give existing systems additional functionality and enable all-new capabilities. ABMS is the U.S. Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System program, which is a broad initiative exploring a wide array of new technology to improve networking and associated capabilities, with a heavy emphasis on leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The REAP pod is also notably one of three pods that the Air National Guard is now exploring as part of a large upgrade package, referred to as Ghost Reaper, for its MQ-9s. General Atomics first unveiled the Ghost Reaper concept in 2020. A Reaper from the 174th Attack Wing, an element of the New York Air National Guard, flew with a set of Ghost Reaper pods during the recent iteration of the annual Northern Edge exercise in Alaska.

The other two pods that are part of this configuration are a Centerline Avionics Bay Pod, which provides an expansion area where various additional systems can be installed, and Northrop Grumman's Freedom Pod. The Freedom Pod contains the advanced Freedom 550 software-defined radio, which, depending on its exact configuration, has the power to translate between a wide array of different and otherwise incompatible waveforms, as well as sport an infrared search and track (IRST) system.

Between REAP and the Freedom 550, the Ghost Reaper concept could turn the MQ-9 into a powerful data-fusion node, able to collect information from various sources, including its own onboard sensors and ISR data collected by drones it has launched, and then help push it out to other aircraft, as well as friendly forces down below. The Air Force has said specifically that these pods will allow Reapers "to receive and pass information to and from older fourth generation and newer fifth-generation aircraft," a major area of interest for the service for years now.

"REAP bridged surveillance imagery video from a Coyote unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to ground command-and-control assets," according to a story from Aviation Week last September. "Follow-on versions of REAP include Link 16 integration, providing low-latency tactical data link information to military personnel in the air and on the ground. This new capability would allow the Joint Terminal Attack Controller to designate an attack aircraft to hit a target."

Raytheon's Coyote family of small drones is another design that is increasingly popular within the U.S. military, as a whole. Coyote variants have been employed in a number of research and development efforts regarding swarming technology over the years, especially within the U.S. Navy, and the Block 3 design is now being employed in a new round of work in this vein, which you can read more about here.

On top of all that, the Freedom Pod's IRST would offer a way to passively watch for aerial threats, either to the drone itself or an other assets it might working with, even stealthy aircraft or missiles, and in environments where there is significant electronic jamming.


General Atomics has also flight tested its Avenger drone with a Lockheed Martin Legion Pod equipped with an infrared search and track (IRST) system, as seen here.

All of this comes as the future of the MQ-9, in particular, is increasingly uncertain. Last year, the Air Force announced, unexpectedly, its desire to stop buying any additional Reapers, citing how vulnerable they would be in a higher-end conflict. The service then initiated a replacement program for these drones, known as MQ-Next, which you read more about here.

Congress blocked those plans by inserting funding for additional Reapers in a defense spending bill that became law in January despite a veto from then-President Donald Trump. However, the Air Force continues to make clear that it is working to move beyond the MQ-9.

General Atomics is also now pitching the MQ-9 as an alternative option to SOCOM's Armed Overwatch effort. The Armed Overwatch program is looking to acquire an armed manned aircraft of some kind to replace Air Force Special Operations Command's U-28A Draco fleet. SOCOM envisions the Armed Overwatch aircraft operating primarily in more permissive environments in support of lower-end conflicts.

Of course, any future replacement for the Air Force's MQ-9s, as well as the Army's MQ-1Cs, is likely still years away from entering widespread service, meaning that Reapers and Gray Eagles could very much benefit from upgrades and add-on capabilities that could make them more relevant in higher-end conflicts in the near term. General Atomics says that it hopes that the smaller air-launched UAS it revealed this week at SOFIC will fly for the first time in 2022.

Brinkley, GA-ASI's Director of Strategic Communications & Marketing, stressed that the development of many of these new capabilities, including work on Sparrowhawk and the launching of ALEs from Army Gray Eagles, has already progressed to a significant degree. "We’re not talking about some distant future here. It’s not 'Star Trek.'" he said.

As such, other existing and future operators of the Reaper, or other variants and derivatives of that design, could also be interested in these new capabilities for their drones. This operator base is now notably growing thanks to changes last year in the U.S. government's restrictions on exporting unmanned aircraft.

All told, the coming evolution of the capabilities of both the MQ-9 and MQ-1C within the U.S. military, especially their increasing ability to launch smaller unmanned aircraft, potentially in networked swarms, looks set to be full of exciting new developments in the coming years, if not months.

https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/un-drone-arme-aurait-abattu-un-soldat-sans-instruction-en-mars-2020--31-05-2021-2428967_23.php a écrit:

Un drone armé aurait abattu un soldat sans instruction en mars 2020
Cet aéronef tueur a « chassé une cible humaine » sans en avoir reçu l'ordre, selon un rapport de l'ONU relayé par le « New Scientist ». Une première.
De fabrication turque, ce quadcoptere KARGU-2 est un drone d'attaque mortel.
De fabrication turque, ce quadcoptère KARGU-2 est un drone d'attaque mortel. Sebastien JARRY / MAXPPP / /MAXPPP
Par LePoint.fr
Publié le 31/05/2021 à 20h19

Une « prise d'initiative » effrayante. Selon un rapport du groupe d'experts du Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU sur la Libye, révélé par le New Scientist, un drone tueur aurait attaqué et abattu un soldat en mars 2020, sans en avoir reçu l'ordre au préalable. L'aéronef armé aurait ainsi « chassé une cible humaine » de manière autonome lors du conflit opposant les forces gouvernementales libyennes et une faction militaire dissidente, dirigée par le général Khalifa Haftar, note le rapport.

De fabrication turque, ce quadcoptère KARGU-2 est un drone d'attaque mortel conçu pour les guerres asymétriques et les opérations antiterroristes, précise Business Insider. Sans aucune instruction particulière, l'aéronef téléguidé aurait automatiquement engagé plusieurs cibles, dont des véhicules transportant du matériel de combat, ainsi que des militaires, tuant au passage le soldat, qui battait en retraite.
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Un mode autonome « très efficace »

Conçu pour être dirigé vers une cible et exploser à l'impact, il fonctionnait dans un mode autonome « très efficace » qui ne nécessitait aucun contrôleur humain, détaille le rapport de l'ONU. Ainsi, l'appareil pouvait s'en prendre à des cibles sans qu'une connexion de données n'ait besoin d'être établie entre l'opérateur et la munition. Ce dysfonctionnement constitue probablement une grande première, selon le consultant en sécurité nationale Zak Kellenborn, spécialisé dans les systèmes sans pilote et les drones. À partir de cet incident, l'expert s'inquiète de potentielles récidives, et se demande « à quelle fréquence » ce genre de drone « identifie mal les cibles ».

À LIRE AUSSIDes drones « ambulances » dans le ciel toulousain
Cette révélation relance en tout cas le débat sur la réglementation des armes autonomes. Auprès du New Scientist, le chercheur Jack Watling a d'ailleurs estimé que l'incident démontrait le besoin « urgent et important » de discuter en profondeur du sujet. Dans la foulée de ce rapport, l'ONG Human Rights Watch a demandé la fin des robots « tueurs » et fait campagne pour une « interdiction préventive du développement, de la production et de l'utilisation d'armes entièrement autonomes ».

Fueling the future: The #Navy made history June 4 conducting the first ever refueling operation between the MQ-25 T1 unmanned tanker and the F/A-18 Super Hornet.

: https://t.co/Nk2N3H1W0T pic.twitter.com/lleKEaTjgD

— NAVAIR (@NAVAIRNews) June 7, 2021

Citation :

warontherocks.com

Say Hello to Turkey’s Little Friend: How Drones Help Level the Playing Field -

Aaron Stein


Turkey’s recent sale of armed drones to Poland and Ukraine, and interest from other Eastern European countries, has led a cadre of analysts to suggest that Ankara is using arms sales to contain Russia. This is not the case. Moscow has studied the flagship of Turkey’s drone fleet, the Bayraktar TB2, and concluded that it is not a threat to a high-end adversary operating a layered air defense with electronic jamming. Despite this rather obvious conclusion, the TB2 has won many admirers, given the innovative way that the Turkish government has used the drone’s onboard cameras to rapidly disseminate easily shareable video clips of the system destroying Soviet-vintage air defense systems and ground combat vehicles.

Turkey has pioneered drone use for the social media age, splicing together videos of the TB2’s kills and rapidly spreading these videos and imagery through semi-official social media accounts. The videos shape narratives about the efficacy of Turkish drones and their battlefield prowess, reinforcing ideas about the future of combat. This innovative use of war propaganda is the most potent lesson from Turkey’s most recent conflicts and is likely to be copied by future drone users. The use of a drone’s sensor for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and war propaganda is not entirely new, but Turkey has taken it to new levels, demonstrating how countries can achieve strategic effects and help drive international interest in arms sales.

A narrative surrounding the success of Turkish drones has taken hold in Turkey, which may actually shape perceptions amongst national security elites about the future of the Turkish armed forces and how Ankara should cooperate with its traditional Western allies. The successful propaganda campaign that has accompanied the TB2’s use in battle may continue to fuel an internal belief that the country can go it alone and prop up the narrative within the country that a decoupling from the United States and much of Europe is beneficial for Turkish foreign policy.

The international interest in sales of the TB2 abroad represents a win for Turkish domestic industry, but these wins are independent of a coherent political-military strategy in the wars in which Ankara is now involved. The TB2 is well-suited for small, irregular wars where Turkish intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms can help tilt the balance in favor of allied ground forces. This was the case in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. In Syria, Turkish drones were not able to overcome the Russian aerospace forces, despite the TB2 destroying significant amounts of Syrian regime equipment. In both Syria and Libya, the TB2 suffered a fairly high rate of attrition from older air defense systems, but because of the drone’s low cost, Turkey was able to sustain a high operational tempo. Still, because these drones have proved susceptible to ground fire, Russian planners have concluded that these types can be countered by a modern air defense, so there is little concern among Russian security elites about the proliferation of Turkish drones in Eastern Europe.

In this sense, the lesson from Turkey’s drone wars is one that American and Russians analysts have long understood: A cheap, simple-to-use platform has benefits in providing support to ground forces in conflicts where an adversary has little in the way of capable air defenses. However, in a peer-level conflict, drones like the TB2 are not survivable. The more salient lesson for the United States is how propaganda can shape narratives about conflict and how high-definition, drone-captured videos can shape the way in which the social-media generation understands combat.

The Nationalist Narrative: Turkish Defense Independence

The TB2’s use in regional conflicts has coincided with a sharp downturn in defense ties with Washington, following Ankara’s purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air and missile defense system. The purchase has led to Turkey’s removal from the F-35 program, in which Ankara had invested billions of dollars, and which was to form the backbone of the future Turkish air force and naval aviation. The purchase also led to the imposition of U.S. sanctions for violating the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act, and a de facto congressional arms embargo in response to Turkey’s October 2019 invasion of U.S.-held territory in northeast Syria. Ankara has signaled no willingness to compromise with Washington over these issues, so a resolution seems remote.

The sanctions saga is certain to harden Turkish efforts to continue to invest in its own domestic arms industry to lessen its dependence on the United States. This is because the United States retains end-user rights over myriad controlled items, which means that for certain products made abroad, Washington gets a say over whether a nominally “locally made” Turkish product can be exported. Turkey’s drone program has its origins in similar constraints. The Turkish armed forces were an early adopter of drones. The country purchased the Gnat-750 even before the Central Intelligence Agency. Ankara’s desire to build upon this history of drone use, however, eventually ran afoul of U.S. export controls and a general “presumption of denial” on the sale of the armed drones. Turkey’s efforts to build an indigenous drone began almost immediately after the purchase of the Gnat-750, but it was not until Ankara was stymied from procuring armed American systems that its indigenous efforts became a focal point for the country’s arms development.

The Turkish military has been involved in a protracted, counter-insurgent campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) since 1984. The PKK’s strongholds are in the tri-border mountainous area where Iraq, Iran, and Turkey converge. The terrain is hostile and difficult to hold and Ankara’s ability to find and fix targets, and then deliver munitions, was hobbled by a slow time between detecting targets and tasking aircraft to strike them. The Gnat-750 was the first effort to improve reconnaissance, but it was the American example in Iraq and Afghanistan — and then all around the world — that demonstrated the value of armed drones for low-intensity missions.

Drones Don’t Scare Moscow: The Danger of Extrapolation

The Turkish government intended to use the TB2 to support its operations against the PKK, but Ankara has used the drone as a tool to intervene in conflicts outside its borders, too. Ankara has created an off-the-shelf model for intervention that uses the TB2 to strike armor and air defense sites, or to provide intelligence in support of other weapons, such as the Israeli-made loitering munitions that were used to great effect in support of Azerbaijani forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. The model enabled a Turkish-backed counter-offensive in Libya that staved off the collapse of Tripoli to rival non-Turkish backed militias, and helped enable the Azerbaijani military to wrest control of much of Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh (although the role played by drones in that conflict, while critical, was secondary to that of loitering munitions). In Syria, the Turkish military used the TB2 to strike Syrian regime targets ringing the M4 highway, plinking armored vehicles and short-range, mobile Pantsir S-1 missile sites. The Turkish government quickly declassified these images, releasing them through cut-out accounts on social media to shape how its operation was perceived. This effective use of propaganda has led some to suggest that the TB2 was a decisive tool to end conflicts on Turkey’s terms and symbolized Ankara’s ascension to great-power status.

In reality, Turkey’s engagements in Libya and Syria have led to mixed outcomes, independent of Turkey’s use of force. In Libya, for example, Turkey has emerged as an important external actor in the conflict, but once Russian forces intervened with aircraft and Wagner Group mercenaries in 2020, the Turkish-backed offensive stopped and negotiations began. The Russian Federation officially denies that it sent aircraft to Libya, but the obvious deployment was a slimmed-down version of its own template for expeditionary operations: a contractor-staffed operation with links to the Russian military. The Russian template — and Turkey’s — is to use a slimmed-down, mixed aviation regiment to project force abroad and to decrease the logistics burden associated with an open-ended air campaign far from the country’s borders.

In Turkey’s case, it has been able to use airports on the border with Syria to maintain nearly constant armed overflight. Ankara safely assumes that its territory is off-limits to either Russian or Syrian attack, and therefore can fly its drones unmolested from inside its territory. A 2017 agreement in Idlib appears to have shielded the Russian and Turkish militaries from one another. This status quo broke down in late 2019, as the Syrian regime mounted a successful campaign to take back control of the M4 and M5 highways. The offensive overran Turkish outposts, leading Ankara to supply the opposition with shoulder-fired missiles. The use of these missiles against Russian and regime aircraft prompted retaliatory airstrikes, including one by a Russian fighter bomber that killed 34 Turkish soldiers. The incident prompted Ankara to use the TB2 to strike regime targets and to try and defend Seraqib, a town that sits at the junction of the two highways. Turkish pressure failed, with Seraqib falling to the regime and Moscow agreeing to a new ceasefire line that met none of Ankara’s initial demands, but which halted the regime’s offensive.

Turkish forces successfully used the TB2 to destroy Syrian regime equipment, raising the cost for the regime and pummeling the exhausted and inexperienced regime forces. During this conflict, a bifurcated targeting process emerged. Outside the single incident of a Russian aircraft targeting a Turkish outpost, Russian and Turkish forces did not target one another. Instead, Turkish TB2s would hit Syrian regime forces, while the Russians would use airpower to prevent the regime forces from being overrun in areas where the Turks concentrated fire. This strategy allowed both external actors to back their clients but still negotiate with one another to control escalation and to halt conflict if needed. The Russian goal has been to push the Syrian armed forces to the forefront of the fighting in Syria, with only Russian enablers and airpower to support offensive operations.

Lessons for the Future

The TB2 is clearly not suited for combat against a high-end adversary, but its use by Turkey shows how even middle-tier powers can use low-cost weapons in wars of attrition. This lesson is one that the United States should have already internalized, given its heavy reliance on precision munitions and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance overwatch in the post-9/11 wars.

The use of the TB2 in Libya also showed how medium-power countries can use drones to enhance propaganda to support their operations and how countries can carry out expeditionary-type operations on the cheap, without a large logistical tail that raises the cost of air operations. The Turkish military was able to forward-deploy drones in Libya and keep them flying and armed, despite a relatively high rate of attrition from ground-fired missiles. The Turkish model of intervention is potentially attractive to other middle-sized powers. A cheap drone like the TB2 can help tilt the balance in favor of an allied regional actor, without the drone operator having to deploy large numbers of troops. These troops can be deployed in relatively safe facilities— a staple of recent U.S. combat operations in Iraq and Syria — which lowers the risk of casualties.

Most of the forces dying in these conflicts are local proxies, insulating policymakers from any political blowback. The rapid declassification of strike videos, then, allows policymakers to capitalize on the “rally around the flag” effect and shape domestic and international narratives about the efficacy of combat. These videos paper over the large number of locals killed on the ground, and help shield policymakers from criticism. Take Idlib: The TB2 destroyed large amounts of regime armor and managed to kill some Pantsir S-1 air defense systems. Yet, Turkey had to settle for an outcome that fell well short of its stated political goals: the return of territory the regime had taken and a return to the 2017 ceasefire lines. Instead, Ankara managed to halt an offensive, but not roll back any of the opposition’s losses. This outcome was decidedly mixed for Turkey, but the online propaganda has reinforced the idea of a decisive victory. And this narrative, then, feeds the online chatter about some military advantage gained by Ankara “ring-fencing” Russia with drones.

The TB2 signals that the barriers to “skinny” expeditionary operations have been lowered. The United States would be wise to update its assumptions about how middle-sized powers can now project force abroad and shape narrative in easy and straightforward ways. This lesson is far more critical than thinking a small drone is a revolutionary game-changer, capable of threatening a larger power.

The story of the TB2 remains politically powerful in Turkey. As the story is told, Ankara overcame a U.S. refusal to provide it with weapons with an indigenous solution, and this indigenous solution is now on the cutting edge of warfare. This is a politically useful narrative and is likely to be used to frame Turkey’s pursuit of an indigenous jet fighter, now that Ankara has lost out on the F-35. However, the story of the TB2 is incomplete and for all the hype online, it is critical to note that analysts still have little understanding of how this platform would perform or be used against a modern adversary. The future is certain to feature more unmanned aircraft, but as of today, these systems cannot replace a modern air force. The success of the TB2 is undeniable, but those successes have been amplified through a smart and innovative way to use the drone’s sensors for propaganda. Future operators may mimic this approach, developing their own “skinny” expeditionary templates and matching information operations to lower the political costs of armed intervention and to shape how war is perceived amongst online fans enamored with tracking conflicts on Twitter.

Aaron Stein is the director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.