Publication Date: 03/24/2003
Day: Monday
Edition: NATIONAL
Word Count: 992
PUBLICATION: Investor's Business Daily
Headline: Drones Give Our Forces Terrifying Element Of Surprise; UAVs Seek And Destroy; Predators, Global Hawks helped defeat agents of the Taliban and al-Qaida
Byline: BY PETER BENESH
If he dares step out in the open, Saddam Hussein knows his enemy will spot him. Spot him?
They'll be able to count the beads of sweat on his brow.
He also knows that the technology that opens his pores to scrutiny can bring hellfire down on him.
That technology is the drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle.
There's no sanctuary from the all-seeing eyes of a modern drone, says retired Air Force Col. John Warden, architect of the first Gulf War's air campaign.
"The enemy can't know when those things are up there," Warden said. "He
must assume he is not only being observed but is one Hellfire missile-shot from death."
Since the early days of hot-air balloons, warfighters have tried to see behind enemy lines.
Balloons and spotters in their baskets made juicy targets. So did -- do
planes, as the crew of a U.S. Navy P3 Orion found out in April 2001.
A Chinese jet fighter struck the prop-driven spy plane in international air space. The pilot saved his crew of 24 and brought the crippled plane to a safe landing inside China. In 1960, a Soviet missile brought down U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. He spent two years as a Soviet prisoner. The Orion is a mainstay of the U.S. and other navies. Updated versions of the U-2 remain in surveillance service, most recently over Iraq.
Target: Taliban
Experts say that drones such as Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Global Hawk and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.'s Predator can do the job better, cheaper and longer than the P3 or U-2. Both Predator and Global Hawk helped defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In November, a Predator armed with Hellfire missiles blasted an SUV in
Yemen, killing six al-Qaida agents.
Drones offer "great advantages and opportunities" over manned spy lanes, says Warden, author of "Winning in FastTime" and head of business strategy firm Venturist Inc. in Montgomery, Ala.
"What's the point of putting pilots at risk if you don't have to?" asks
Warden. Drones fill major gaps in U.S. air power.
Sleepless Knights The problem with manned spy planes is that they are "not persistent," said Warden. "An airplane shows up for a couple of minutes and is gone." Drones can circle and snoop for up to 40 hours. No pilot can stay awake that long.
Drones take their orders from ground crews, who can be thousands of miles away. Said Warden: "That gives us more control over the ground. And we need surveillance planes that can fly anywhere in the world from the U.S. without us asking the Turks or Saudis, "May I?"
In 2001, a Global Hawk flew for 22 hours from the U.S. to Australia on just two mouse clicks, one to take off and another to land.
Unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, technology is still in its early stages, says Warden. One day, drones could displace most pilots.
"The only reason for manned airplanes is that some missions are so critical that a human reaction is needed to make a last-second decision," he said. Despite their successes, drones still must overcome Pentagon skepticism.
"Military guys don't want to try new things," said Warden. "UAVs are up
against resistance from old fliers. The U.S. Army didn't disband its last combat horse regiment until 1943."
The UAV won't replace all pilots, says Larry Dickerson, an analyst with
Forecast International/DMS Inc. in Newtown, Conn. But UAVs will liberate some pilots from drudgery, says Dickerson.
They'll also break through battlefield bureaucracy.
"To have someone orbiting over empty desert to detect a Scud launcher is a waste of a multimillion-dollar pilot on a sleepwalking mission," Dickerson said.
Current practice of calling in a combat aircraft to hit a target of
opportunity wastes time, says Dickerson. An armed drone that spots a target can fire its missiles at the touch of a button on the ground. The military faces a "learning curve" to appreciate the drone's potential, Dickerson says.
Drones are "no more intelligent than the computer on your desk," said
Dickerson. "They're good where parameters for unknowns are limited, but
UAVs have problems in a fluid situation."
The key problem is military bureaucracy, says Dickerson. "The trickle-down of information can be too slow to take advantage of rapidly changing events." The Pentagon has been slow to embrace UAVs, says retired Rear Adm. Tim Beard, business development head for UAVs at Northrop Grumman in San Diego. "UAVs have no constituency in Washington," he said. "No one has grown up in the UAV community, so they have no champion."
The logic of replacing manned surveillance planes with UAV is self-evident, says Beard, a former Navy pilot.
A P3 Orion like the one brought down in China can have a crew of up to 24 people. Then add in the maintenance crew, says Beard.
A squadron of nine P3s takes 350 people on the ground, says Beard. "UAVs can take 75% of the P3 missions with a handful of people on the ground," he said.
On many levels, UAVs make economic sense, says Michel Merluzeau, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan in San Jose, Calif.
The aircraft they'd replace, like the U-2 and P3, are as much as 30 to 40 years old and are based on 50-year-old designs, says Merluzeau. "They're equipment-heavy and maintenance-heavy," he said.
UAVs are far less demanding, he says, but training their crews will require more initial spending.
Over time, UAVs will give "significant economies of scale," said Merluzeau.
"But the more capable you want it to be, the more technology you pack in, the bigger it is, the more expensive."
Glamour Weapons Northrop Grumman's jet-powered, high-altitude Global Hawk costs $30 million. It has a helicopter model, called Fire Scout, that costs $3 million.
A Predator from General Atomic costs $4.5 million to $7 million, depending on equipment and model.
Many companies at home and abroad build UAVs or components. The U.S. firms include Boeing Co., Raytheon Corp., Bell Helicopter Textron, General Dynamics Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp.
The UAV has become a glamour weapon, says Merluzeau. "We like it when we surprise the bad guys," he said. "It fits our view of war. We don't lose people -- they do."
Peter Benesh
Investor's Business Daily
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