Annotate two points of interest from your readings this week by Thursday of this week. Your initial post should be at least 250 words. Please respond to at least 3 other students. Responses should be a minimum of 100 words and can include direct questions.
Note: Please bear in mind throughout the course the “theoretical” position you hold within the organization is that of a Program or Contract Manager as you make your recommendations.
Purpose of this assignment:
Explain the possible alternate strategies to meet mission needs of the Predator.
This has a lot of videos and other materials on the development of the Predator drone. There are different perspectives on the mission need and government contacting of the Predator because the government was not interested in drones to start with but after 9-11, the US government moved ahead with developing many different types of drones.
Links:
Predator drone video located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMh8Cjnzen8
Book Review of ‘Predator’ by Richard Whittle located at http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-predator-by-richard-whittle-1410822967
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles a RAND report located at http://www.rand.org/topics/unmanned-aerial-vehicles.html
Interviews on the Predator located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVNN_Je7RgM
Interview on the Predator from a maintenance officer located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2-uUOrJ_rE
Government Contract Weekly episode located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAT99aGLmpE
Research in the library or the web as well to find material that could support your position.
Instructions: Your initial post should be at least 250 words. Please respond to at least 3 other students. Responses should be a minimum of 100 words and include direct questions.
To start off I am sorry but I have supported RPAs, Remotely Piloted Aircraft, for the better part of my career after having supported A-10 & F-16 mission planning. First, I would like to clarify two discrepancies within the required reading sources. Referring the aircraft/crews as drones or drone crews is considered extremely offensive in our community and should be referred to as RPA’s as it is what DoD and US leadership have written into doctrine as our aircraft/crew terminology. Secondly, the Interview on the Predator from a maintenance officer was completely invalidated by the fact that every video they played was of a RQ-4 not a MQ-1/B. It is important to not that the RQ-4 is an ISR, Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance, asset only, and the MQ-1/B and MQ-9 are the assets that can conduct both ISR and employ Hellfire missiles.
There are a few alternative ideas that I have heard thrown around on how the MQ-1/B & MQ-9 are conducting missions that any other asset could conduct with similar precision, but having supported multiple airframes mission planning I can say from my standpoint as an intelligence analyst that this is untrue. There is no weapons system that can match the loiter time of that of the RPAs, nor the capability to maintain custody of the target from pre-execution, execution, and post-execution. In order to conduct the missions that the RPA units conduct would take multiple ISR assets to establish pattern of life, a fighter or bomber asset to employ munitions (most likely a fighter pending the target type), and multiple ISR assets again to conduct battle damage assessment to ensure the strike intent was met. Having attended weapons school I do believe every asset within the DoD inventory was developed for a very specific role and that they all assist in the overall mission success; which is currently to remove terrorists off the battlefield and support ground force movements. The amount of assets it would require to conduct the same missions as the RPAs, to include the hundreds to thousands of hours of pre-strike ISR, would cost exponentially more than the price of the development and maintenance of the RPA fleet.
The requirement of an aircraft to be able to loiter for 20+ hours, year round, employ precision munitions, and fly at the specified altitudes is something that in necessary in todays war because the terrorists get a vote in mission execution just as much as the blue forces. Our satellites are not all-weather capable, at least not to the fidelity needed, and our historical ISR fleet is not able to be maintained and flown in every area of the world that needs ISR coverage. Also, from a manning standpoint are you more willing to lose a RPA or a manned aircraft in a country that has multiple threat systems? The savviness of our enemy in understanding our weapons systems capabilities is ever growing which seemingly increases the validity of the RPA fleet to conduct the long ISR hunt for the necessary strikes in addition to extreme precision with smaller munitions to ensure the safety of civilians that may be nearby.
The Predator
Explain the possible alternate strategies to meet mission needs of the Predator.
The Predator is the Unmanned Aircraft used by the Air Force. I am not connected in any way with military combat equipment nor have I ever enlisted in the military, so knowledge of the drone program is limited to personal research. From what I have read the Predator drone was first developed as the MQ-1 and was primarily utilized for intelligence gathering. Only later did the Predator Drone become a very questionable necessary weapon for the military. This all began some 15 years ago. At the start of the program crew ratios were based on the use of the Predator while it was at the beginning stages. The Predator grew in attack capability and more technologically advanced systems, the human capital was not considered. This created a major problem for the Air Force. The crew to UAV ratio did not change enough to stay current with the workload associated with the changes. Now that the Predator MQ-1 is being retired and the extremely advanced MQ-9 is replacing them, there will have to be alternatives for the Air Force in regards to service personnel needed for the new Predator and for the increased use of this UAV. Studies show the increased workload is causing low morale and decreased desire for individuals wanting to be part of this program. So, the most prominent challenge appears to be human capital and training. An alternative to solve this could be the use of civilian personnel or as some have suggested, the use of other enlisted personnel. Budgeting and planning needs to include the use of civilian personnel and training. Current training has been compromised due to the lack of time personnel have due to the low number of crews or poor ratios.
For this week’s forum, we are discussing the Predator Drone. I can honestly say that I do not have much experience in this field. But, on the other hand, I do have experience with being on the ground in the fight. After watching the videos and doing a reading on the Predator, it is apparent to me that there is no real alternative to the Predator. In one of the videos, the reporter brought up the concern of collateral damage from the Hell Fire missile that the Predator fires. I have seen what the Hell Fire missile can do up close the collateral damage is minimal compared to using standard artillery. Along with that, it was stated that is almost impossible for a Drone Operator to fire a weapon without one hundred plus people watching it. Another great thing about the Drone is the operation time that it has in the air. A Predator drone can stay in the air for 20+ hours is very impressive.
In one of the articles that I read is the Predator Drone being used for Department of Homeland Security board recon. The report stated that the flight time per hour for a Predator Drone cost 3,234 dollars and cost to fly every hour for one year would be 28.5 million dollars (Olive, 2011). The argument in the article was that it is cheaper to fly a single pilot aircraft which Homeland Security has the IOMAX Archangel. This plane was purchased by Homeland Security in 2015 to help alleviate the cost of operating the Predator Drone.
