J-UCAS Canceled, But Not for Naught (Socialism Kills Another Military Program)

US Navy Capt. Ralph Alderson, program director of the Joint-Unmanned Combat Aerial System (J-UCAS) program, said right at the start that he would address the elephant in the room.

The FY07 defense budget provides zero funding for the J-UCAS, and the newly released 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) calls for the program's "restructuring," as many of the attendees at the Association of Unmanned Systems International's Unmanned Systems Program Review 2006 conference in Washington, DC, on Feb. 8 perhaps already knew, Capt. Alderson said.

"Restructuring" would appear to be a euphemism for "canceled," but despite standing at the podium with a PowerPoint presentation for a program now in limbo, the J-UCAS program director said not all is for naught – that there are many lessons learned which can be applied to the restructured program, the exact nature of which is still to be determined.

"The Navy will be developing a long-range UCAV [unmanned combat aerial vehicle]. That is the sum total of what I can tell you," Capt. Alderson said. "The impacts are still being worked pretty hard. But we're still committed to getting a good solid demonstration done, so we can pass lessons learned to the Navy."

Seen as a future family of US Air Force and Navy UCAVs employing unmanned aircraft as large as F-16s, the J-UCAS program was supposed to develop unmanned vehicles able to perform a variety of missions, including deep strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (see "Drones That Sting"). But Ryan Henry, the US Defense Department principal deputy undersecretary for policy, said in a presentation on the QDR that the J-UCAS program is being restructured to include an air-to-air refueling capability and "more options for payloads and distance."

Asked if the J-UCAS program would essentially be folded into a still undefined US Navy long-range UCAV project, Capt. Alderson would say only that "there's a lot of discussion. We're not seeing an Air Force element, so it looks like the Navy going forward." The J-UCAS program, among other things, did not plan to allow aircraft carrier "cats and traps," or catapulted takeoffs and trapped landings, yet carrier survivability is the Navy's highest priority, Capt. Alderson said.

Prior to the announced restructuring, the J-UCAS program had completed more than 60 test flights of the Boeing X-45A vehicle, culminating in August 2005 with a demonstration of preemptive destruction suppression of enemy air defenses (DEAD) involving two X-45As. Tests also included dropping a GPS-guided weapon, simultaneous control of two X-45As by one operator, and the transfer of control over two vehicles while in flight to another control station 900 miles away.

The two X-45B vehicles funded in October 2005, representing a $40-million funding cut in the program that reduced the planned vehicles from three to two, were to have been delivered by March or April, with a first flight in 2008. Yet another iteration, the X-45C, was to have delivered three vehicles carrying the GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) for the purpose of developing software for effectively controlling weapons, with tests to have begun in 2007.

A representative from Boeing Air Force Systems, the developer of the X-45 vehicles, said the company couldn't comment on the future of the J-UCAS program, because it has not yet received any official word from the Air Force on its status.

Capt. Alderson said that during the course of the J-UCAS program, he has had difficulty making clear in briefings to senior leaders in the Pentagon that the central challenge J-UCAS was intended to address was the in-flight autonomy of mission planning, not simply the autonomous control of the aircraft. Mission planning was supposed to be the heart of the J-UCAS, capitalizing on network-centric capabilities that would permit multiple aircraft to work together on various kinds of missions. Capt. Alderson said his own personal lessons learned from J-UCAS include the understanding that the "affordability" of unmanned aerial vehicles is often overstated, that the payoff is in the operations of the aircraft and not its acquisition.

No matter how you slice it, global charity and domestic charity continue to kill the ability of the USA to develop weapon systems for our future defense. The list of cutbacks and cancelations of weapon programs is very lengthy, but swamped by the list of new welfare programs domestically and global charity.

Today, socialism is killing the ability of the USA to fund its military and defend us in the future.

Shortly after September 11, 2001 I sent an E-mail to a friend, an active duty Officer serving inside the Beltway. We have known and worked together for 16 years at that point.

He asked me to go back through Vietnam and what general trends should he be expecting.

I talked about infiltration of our base camps by locals apparently supporting our efforts. This, Thank God, hasn’t happened; yet.

I talked about the lack of trained personnel and special equipment required for this type of war. I warned that after a period of time every weapon system the US has will be judged by its ability to support the ongoing war on terrorism. Even systems of limited use will bully their way in because failure to do so means their end (funding cuts). This continues to happen.

Then I talked about the real threat to our ongoing war on terrorism - Congressional Re-Election Bribery, also known as pork spending, Congressional set asides, etc.. I told him we would have support from Congress until they realized that there isn’t enough money to pay for the war and buy their way through a re-election campaign. When that happened the lesser of the two projects, supporting the war, would go unfounded. That we are seeing today.

Until Congressional conceit is reigned in and they are forcefully convinced that their continued residence inside the Beltway is not necessary for our national survival the nation’s “must pay bills” will never be paid.

The lessons learned by Congress during Vietnam, and there are many many more, are still alive today. And we see bits and pieces of them in the daily "news" reported by the LMSM.

Wonder which hotels will be used as emergency helicopter landing zones this time.

Just a hint:

Sometimes these programs get canceled because they just don't work. I have warned FReepers to not get too caught up in this drone technology. They are running into significant setbacks when they try to manage some of the things that require a pilot's eyes. I think problems like in-flight refueling may not ever get solved. It may be a piece of cake for a human, but for someone sitting at a desk looking at video, I don't see how one could figure the angles, stick deflections and closures to make a safe hookup. Some things in the cockpit require 'feel' to get right. Sometimes, your ass can tell you what the aircraft is doing a lot faster than your instruments can.

OK, I'd spin down the gloom and doom just a little.

FWIW, the current program doesn't meet the future mission plan. Doesn't say that the current program wasn;t going well.

"... an air-to-air refueling capability and "more options for payloads and distance." ..."

Look at the future of the USAF, manned/piloted weapons platforms in general, and integrated inter-service informations environments and you might discern some reasons to 'restructure' the program for an amended mission.

Are there politics involved in this? Sure. There were politics involved in the original program. Deal with it.

To me, there's a good chance that the F-22 and the JSF will be the LAST piloted strike aircraft. (We'll always need humans in the cockpit for CAS and fur-balls.)

Surely the B-2 is the last piloted 'strategic' bomber. <-- just my opinion.

There is more there than the article tells...

The J-UCAS program was only a demo. It was not creating producible vehicles, only a few airframes from each contractor, and none of them fully functional. Those aircraft were not going to war.

Also the USAF had wanted out from it for some time to pay for things like the F-22. Gen Jumper had stated previously that the USAF did not intend to buy many of them. In the USAF, the silk scarf crowd rules, and UAVs are a threat to them.

Finally there was a technology effort in the JUCAS program that if successful would have turned the DoD aircraft software world upside down to the detriment of the big contractors like Boeing. That may have hastened its demise as well.

I hear you.

However, they can do unmanned docking in space (granted, the physics are different), and it seems to me if the UMAVs can be landed, then they can be refueled in mid-air.

Tech aside, there is too big a correlation of the huge increase in nonDefense spending and the cancelation of weapon programs.

I know that in the military, the buzz right now is NOT a push to find new advanced weapon programs, but the REAL pressure to the miltiary is to find ways to cut costs.

A simple chart showing the rise in the OMB Superfunction "HR" (mostly social programs) over the last 20 years overlayed on a chart showing the reduction in % of total spending going toward Defense tell the real story.

We have seen steadliy dropping % of total spending going toward the military and a steadily surging rise in % of total spending going toward socialism (Superfunction "HR"). I have studied these numbers and charts an enormous amount of time, and it is clear--socialism is preventing the ability of the USA to defend itself in the near future.

Personally I am thinking how mission planning and execution would improve **IF**, as a logical evolution, the 'armed Predator' were available in a higher-speed, more weapons-variable, more survivable platform. [who needs a crewed platform orbiting the battlefield, patrolling a kill-box when a SUITABLE UCAV could put guided munitions on target?]

I do NOT believe we can take a human out of the cockpit of an ait-to-air mission, or out of a close air support mission; at least not for YEARS. The F-22 has a long life ahead of it to secure air superiority and supremacy, to win air-to-air engagement, to provide some air-to-mud. The A-10 or its eventual replacement (the Marines like the F-18D) will always have a manned mission if you ask me.

Now, just to gig you a little -- I presume from your name you are a former zoomie ... is your preference for people in the cockpit just *slightly* colored by your perspective? ;-)

I DO firmly believe that advances in systems, targeting etc etc put a crew in the B-2 for no apparent reason.

Automated refueling is only a challenge because it is new. they had not even started working on that until very recently. They are due for an automated test flight of it later this year. Yeah it is a challenge but really that one is fairly simple since it involves clear cut decisions and factors. It just needs a very fast computer and really good control laws. It is not as hard as artificial decision making. It is a straight forward problem akin to auto-land with an autopilot. People do need to avoid thinking UAVs will replace manned fighters anytime soon. Too many combat decisions need people in the look. They will be a powerful complement and force multiplier but not a replacement. Thinking it is a replacement is the kind of short sighted thinking that removed the guns from fighters when guided missiles got common :P

I believe the key point this article brings home is not so much the technical reasons re the cancellation, but the fact there is NOT ENOUGH MONEY.

Surely, the USAF would like to have triple the number of Raptors it is getting (among other wishes). Remember, we just heard this crap recently where they are taking ALL the F-117s out of service and cutting back on the B-52 and other platforms just to pay for FOUR more Raptors.

The USA is running out of money! We simply do not have the money anymore to defend our nation because so much of our spending is going toward social welfare.

Instead of looking at this article in a narrow focus (technical reasons, etc.), we must look at this article in context with the $8 Trillion in debt, the cost of the war, the rising cost of socialism, SS, Medicaid, boomers and Medicare, the coast of illegal alien medical care and incarceration, and Bush's fixation on giving away the national treasury to foreign governments and dictators, and his fixation on Bono and canceling hundreds of billions in foreign debt owed to us . . ., etc.

All this, and take into account all the stories of the pressure being applied on the military to cut costs, while Bush and Congress dole out BILLIONS of global charity and add new social welfare programs domestically--this is the key reason why this program is being canceled and many other programs, like the F-22, the DD(X), the JSF and so many others are being cut back, canceled, delayed, stretched and generally taking a back seat to the surging, stratoshperic spending in domestic and social welfare.

Socialism trumps the defense of the USA.

Let me see if I can explain this without just disagreeing with you, because you make some valid points?

Because there are usually decades between wars, everything surrounding military procurement is based upon a set of assumptions, with very little actual empirical performance date to rely on for accuracy.

Now with the two Iraq wars, Kosovo, Afghanistan and other conflicts, military planners are better able to determine needed force levels in the future. One thing that is clear, is that we have WAY TOO MUCH weaponry that is either obsolete, outmoded, too old, or just plain ineffective.

Unfortunately, a lot of that weaponry is providing thousands of jobs (and votes) within the Military Industrial complex. You are going to see hundreds of thousands of people put out of work in the next 10 years because their companies were making weapons that we just don't need.

People think we need unmanned aircraft, but don't consider that we can now sling a JDAM over 40 miles and shack a target with a 20-to-30 year old airframe. We've got the big laser coming on line next year, in addition to lots of other new stuff.

The military is trimming the fat because we dont need it, much more so than because the money needs to go elsewhere. The overall budget has increased, but the priorities have changed.

The days of warfare through attrited forces is over. We are going to be light fast and deadly, with no more lumbering big weapons that require all kinds of logistical support. A lot of money is going into rebuilding our intelligence services, so we can have a better idea of what the enemy is doing.

China's military build up is really ridiculous when you look at it, because they are just building targets for the weapons we already have.

p.s. just read your "manifesto" re-published by CongressmanBillieBob. Congrats on your service in the Navy. My father was a first a Marine pilot and then a Navy aviator. My mom was a WAVE, my bro a Ranger. I was NPQ due to a back injury. Thanks for serving. I wish I could have.

I've never flown anything faster than about 135 KIAS, or with more than four cylinders, or even above FL10. So you can bust me. ;-)

Just so ya know, I never want you guys to leave the front cockpit and let the 'computer' land our fully loaded 737 at LaGuardia with a 25 knot crosswind component. I see certain military missions as tailor-made for advanced UCAVs, other well-suited for piloted aircraft.

What makes you think we don't already have that? FReepers forget that we hid a big-ass B-2 Bomber program from the world for over 10 years. (I know nothing). Yes, I am a former Naval Aviator. 'Zoomie' is an Air Force term, but I will forgive the insult.

I can agree with most of that. And I work in that complex so in a way I am shooting at my own foot. There are a lot of dollars going to R&D and priorities are constantly being changed. Not much point in me pointing that out since it is nothing you don't know. I would disagree on the unmanned requirement though. UAVs are really proving their worth in the war on terror. Plus they are fairly small and cheap. Especially cheap to operate since you don't need as much training. As I have pointed out above I don't think they will ever (or anytime soon) be a replacement but I think we do need some more development there. Small craft with really long loiter times able to destroy pop up targets very quickly are very handy in the war on terror. They have already been looking at putting lasers and other directed energy weapons on UAVs so that is not a alternative but a compliment.

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