UAVs in Global War: From Concepts to Action
Expeditionary Wing 432 operators pose with an MQ-9 Reaper at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. Photo source: US Air Force
For many years, most opponents of UAVs in Russia have often used the very dubious thesis of unsuitability as a key argument. drones to action in a global war.
It is very difficult to call such a point of view justified - the entire world experience of using drones says the opposite. So, for example, during the Cold War, the forces of the North Atlantic Alliance, in the event of the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, were going to use several thousand disposable BQM-74 UAVs to "open" the air defense of the Warsaw Pact bloc. A wave of these target drones was supposed to reveal the Soviet radar stations, which were planned to be hit by the HARM PRLR. No less significant was the defeat of the Soviet-Syrian grouping in the Bekaa Valley, known as Operation Medvedka-19 - an important role in identifying and destroying anti-aircraft missile divisions supplied by the SAR from the Soviet Union was played by Israeli small reconnaissance UAVs Tadiran Mastiff, IAI Scout and even outdated American-made AQM-34 Firebee drones.
Over the past decades, NATO has only improved its concepts and tactics of using military drones. Unfortunately, for Western countries, their value was obvious, while the Russian armed forces lost several decades, breaking spears in the debate on the topic "is it fit for war with a serious adversary?" All this time, the military of the Alliance has been developing its UAV fleet, every year better and better adapting it for operations in conditions of a large-scale military conflict.
From an article by Colonel General Grigory Pavlovich Yashkin, Chief Military Adviser in the Syrian Armed Forces “We fought in Syria. There were not only advisers there ":
“A group of electronic support for the strike was created. This group included unmanned reconnaissance aircraft such as "Scout" (Israel) and "Fireby" (USA). Flying over the positions of SAM-6 air defense missile systems, they conducted a live television broadcast of the image to the command post. Receiving such visual information, the Israeli command made unmistakable decisions to launch missile strikes. In addition, these same unmanned aircraft jammed. They tracked the operating frequencies of the radar and guidance equipment of the Syrian missile systems. Moreover, playing the role of "decoy", causing the fire of the Syrian air defense systems, the reconnaissance aircraft diverted it from the combat aircraft. "
Particular attention is paid to UAVs by the American armed forces and the military-industrial complex. So, a few years ago, Northrop Grumman began developing a special drone control system commissioned by the US Air Force. This is a large-scale project of deep modernization of the software of unmanned aerial vehicles, designed for, perhaps, the most unfavorable military scenario of all possible - the complete destruction of the US satellite constellation and subsequent hostilities, even in an atomic war.
The system was named Distributed Autonomy / Responsive Control - DA / RC and is already under active practical testing in the US Air Force. The Pentagon plans to soon begin a large-scale modernization of the entire fleet of American drones, and without any deep work directly on the "hardware" of the aircraft.
The project is intended to give the US Air Force drones the ability to operate almost completely autonomously from external control systems - in fact, without direct operator control and interaction with external communication sources. But the main highlight of the project is the creation of specialized software that will allow drones to independently process and analyze the data received. According to representatives of Northrop Grumman, the computing power of the UAVs in service are being used ineffectively - their potential capabilities make it possible to issue a comprehensive analysis of the tactical situation based on information collected by drones during combat or reconnaissance operations.
In addition, the communication and control system of drones itself is being modernized - it is becoming unified and domain-wide, and is fully consistent with the concepts of network-centric warfare. Now, even the destruction of the main command posts will not guarantee that the drones will be left without control or will be chained to the ground - absolutely any communication terminal will be able to assume the role of command post.
The last forty years of the development of military affairs can be called the era of high-precision weapons... Now, the United States of America and its allies are entering a qualitatively new era in which autonomous intellectual weapons rule the ball.
MQ-9 Reaper - reaper of global war
The United States Air Force does not limit its drone deployment to theoretical groundwork, laboratory research and limited testing. By no means, the US Air Force is actively working on the organizational and logistical structure for the use of drones, even in conditions of enemy dominance in the theater of operations. As mentioned above, these are completely discouraging scenarios - such as large-scale atomic attacks on the military infrastructure of the US Armed Forces, disruption of the chain of command, and a global lack of communications.
Quite eloquently, this approach describes the development of long-range flights of the MQ-9 Reaper, which the US Air Force is conducting in the Pacific Ocean. As can be judged from open sources, such events have recently been held regularly. In fact, they are logistic exercises: military personnel are trained to operate UAVs from non-specialized command posts, and to service them at airfields using a limited amount of equipment and tools. In addition, these flights are carried out using exclusively untrained personnel who do not know how to refuel, service and operate drones. In short, the US Air Force has demonstrated to themselves the incredible flexibility of drones.
As a vivid example of such events, one can cite the ACE REAPER exercise, which was conducted by the US Air Force from September to October this year on the basis of the 556th Test and Assessment Squadron. MQ-9 Reaper automatically took off from Creech Air Force Command Base in Nevada and flew unattended to a Marine Corps base in Hawaii, where they automatically landed.
As mentioned above, after landing, maintenance and refueling was carried out by untrained personnel in the person of the marines. Then MQ-9 made training flights directly to Hawaii, performing patrol and reconnaissance missions, after which new technical teams were trained in their service (they were different for each flight). Very interesting in this stories one more point - pre-flight training was carried out according to a shortened schedule prepared especially for unskilled personnel and took only 20 minutes (instead of the standard 3 hours). It is also worth noting that the Air Force did not just work out close cooperation with the Marine Corps - the latter is actively training within the framework of the new MCDP 7 doctrine, developed by Commandant David H. Berger. The doctrine includes the large-scale use by the Corps of attack unmanned aerial vehicles of various types, incl. from pre-fabricated (within XNUMX hours) field airfields.
An MQ-9 Reaper is on the runway at Creech Air Force Base. Photo source: US Air Force
From Hawaii, MQ-9 flew to Andersen Air Force Base, located on the island of Guam. It is noted that the flights were carried out with a minimum number of connections with the devices - in fact, they moved without any reference to satellites (which, in fact, was laid down in the terms of reference when developing the Distributed Autonomy / Responsive Control - DA / RC system, about which was said earlier).
On the basis of "Andersen" UAVs were planted by hand, but with the help of a not quite standard control center - it was a computer station used for pre-flight testing of aircraft on-board systems. Maintenance was again carried out by untrained personnel, and with a minimum amount of equipment and personnel: only a cart with hand tools, an independent power source in the form of a generator that powered the pump for pumping fuel - in a word, this "logistic complex" devoid of sophistication imitated the harsh conditions of wartime ...
The US Air Force drew very interesting conclusions from the measures taken, having found out that such a high-tech device like the MQ-9 Reaper can be serviced and remain functional with a 90% reduction in technical personnel, a 95% reduction in equipment required for technical maintenance, and a 100% reduction in equipment required to take off and land an attack drone. The experiments of the American Air Force clearly demonstrate that UAVs can be used in the most non-standard and unfavorable conditions - in the event of the destruction of air bases and the loss of a large number of qualified technicians, or directly on the front line, where even soldiers without special training can serve them without any problems, which is very important for the planned military operations against China (most of which will fall on operations with the capture of the islands and the organization of field bases on them).
The MQ-9 Reaper performs a training flight over the Nevada Proving Grounds. Photo source: US Air Force
A further and no less interesting experiment with the participation of UAVs is planned for the next, 2022 - MQ-9 Reaper will take part in the exercises "Valiant Shield 2022", where they will actively interact with the forces fleet and the Marine Corps. There, the capabilities of their field service under a reduced program will be tested in conditions close to combat - and, perhaps, the organizational and conceptual conclusions of these activities should be looked at no less carefully than the results of the ACE REAPER exercises.
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