FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZ. — As war commanders demand more unmanned aircraft systems to support ground units, the Army is preparing to accommodate a surge of trainees during the next few years.
The service is fielding more RQ-7B Shadow platoons and in 2012 will deploy its first MQ-1C Gray Eagle company. That means hundreds more students will be coming to the Army’s sole UAS training facility here in the middle of the Huachuca Mountains’ bucolic foothills in southeastern Arizona.
“Our training throughput continues to increase with 20 programs of instruction,” said Lt. Col. Patrick Sullivan, battalion commander. “We will graduate about 2,000 folks this year and we expect that to increase in the next few years.”
The battalion, comprising 600 soldiers, Department of the Army civilians and contractors, trains about 250 to 300 students daily on the Shadow, MQ-5B Hunter and Warrior-A systems. This month, it begins flight instruction on the new Gray Eagle, formerly known as the Sky Warrior, or the extended range/multi-purpose vehicle.
The Army expects to train and graduate more than 2,200 UAS operators and maintainers beginning in 2012.
“It’s reflective of the number of unmanned systems we’re fielding,” said Col. John M. Lynch, director of the U.S. Army unmanned aircraft systems center of excellence, in a phone interview from Fort Rucker, Ala. “You see the explosion of systems that are out there.”
The 197th Infantry Training Brigade’s 2nd battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment at Fort Benning, Ga., prepares troops to fly the hand-launched Raven UAS. For all other systems, Fort Huachuca is the one-stop shop for UAS training. With 997 square miles of restricted airspace roughly the size of Rhode Island, the base boasts an ideal training area for unmanned aircraft, officials said.
To meet the growing demand, the battalion trains Shadow operators and maintainers 16 hours a day, including on weekends as necessary to maximize facilities and equipment, said Sullivan. All Army UAS operators begin on the Shadow and then move on to the larger systems.
The length of the courses varies with the platform. Shadow operator training takes about 21 weeks. An individual formally trained on Shadow proceeds through an 8-week course to fly the Warrior-A, a cousin to the Air Force’s Predator UAS, and an early version of the Gray Eagle. Gray Eagle training classes will take about 25 weeks.
During that time, students receive information in an academic setting before moving onto flight training, which is broken down into simulation and live flying. About 80 percent of the instruction is in flight simulators and the remaining 20 percent is conducted on the flight line.
“We try to train as realistically as possible. That way when they get downrange, it’s not too much of a difference for them to slip right in that seat to accomplish the mission,” said Staff Sgt. Michael Lingelbach, an instructor for Warrior-A in the battalion’s Charlie Company.
The Army’s workhorse UAS, the Shadow, has flown the bulk of the service’s 1 million flight hours attained in May. This month, the service was expecting its total combat flight hours to breach the 1 million mark as well. With the high operational tempo, it should come as no surprise that the flight training simulators are being maxed out.
The battalion continues to pursue advanced simulation technologies as it strives to meet the Army’s plans for UAS operations through 2035. “Whatever I can do in the simulator, that saves time and money out on the flight line,” said Sullivan.
In the battalion’s simulation training center is a large room that contains 22 ground control stations for flying Shadow and Hunter missions. Pilot and sensor operator consoles sit side by side along the perimeter of the room. Directly behind the consoles, there are rows of tables with computers that allow instructors to monitor and modify the training scenarios. On a late summer day, the room was humming with activity as pairs of soldiers and their instructors donned headsets to work through a variety of missions.
The students here train in two shifts daily. Staff Sgt. Frank Petersen, the standardizations director for Bravo Company, said that at any given time of day, it is not unusual to encounter someone flying the sims. Instructors are taught on the same consoles, he added, pointing at a marine seated next to a civilian instructor. The battalion trains the majority of the Marine Corps and Navy UAS operators, too.
“It’s a challenging time for green suit instructors,” he said. Some of them are transitioning to the Gray Eagle, so the battalion will have to juggle personnel to compensate.
The battalion’s instructors and pilots, many of whom have completed multiple combat tours, say that there is a common misconception that hours of playing computer games translates into a savvier UAS controller.
“I would not say that playing Xbox makes you a better UAV operator,” said Staff Sgt. Eric Wheeler, instructor for Warrior-A aircraft in Charlie Company. He points down the table to his colleague. “Sgt. Petersen, the standards operator, never had a Nintendo growing up. He’s one of the best operators in the battalion.”
Petersen explains that he was raised on a farm. “You can excel in this [military occupation specialty] without that background,” he said. Though the job appeals to teens who are familiar with video games of all types, operating a UAS is not like gaming. “It’s one of those things we try to debunk,” he said.
The battalion operates two airfields. Pioneer is reserved for launching and recovering the Shadow. The system is catapult-launched into the air. When it lands, its tailhook catches a cable at the end of the runway.
The other airfield, Rugge-Hamilton, is considered the operational one. Surrounded by the lush hills made verdant from recent monsoon rains, crews practiced flying aircraft from ground control stations fixed permanently in place next to the flight line. Under a tent set up to block the desert sun’s rays, an instructor stood with a Hunter trainee who is conducting touch-and-go landings and take-offs.
Back at the battalion headquarters, housed in a temporary structure with a gravel parking lot, Sullivan said they’re building a new headquarters down the street. Construction also is under way to build a motor pool and a headquarters company facility.
There already have been a number of changes to this northwestern part of the base, which is jokingly but affectionately referred to as the goat farm. The surrounding hills do form a pastoral backdrop where one would expect to see sheep grazing rather than unmanned aircraft buzzing by.
A dining facility was built two years ago to save instructors and students from having to make the 10- to 15-minute drive along the winding roads back to the main post for meals.
Down at Libby Army Airfield, just north of the main base, a new hangar will be built to accommodate the growing fleet of Gray Eagles. Several temporary buildings will be brought in to support the growth of the program, and a few other projects in the works with Fort Rucker and the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, said Sullivan.
In the meantime, several Warrior-A’s and the first new Gray Eagles sat inside Charlie Company’s existing hangar. A class of maintainers had opened up one of the Gray Eagles and was busily working with tools and parts.
The Army’s UAS project office is hurtling toward a crucial milestone with the new systems. In September, it must pass an initial operational test and evaluation before the Defense Department gives its blessing to commence with full-rate production of the systems. “It’s a very significant event,” said Col. Gregory Gonzalez, project manager for the office. “This is going to be a test for a full company — 128 soldiers, 12 aircraft.”
The combat aviation brigade, which officials declined to identify for security reasons, is currently training and will take possession of the equipment they’re using for the tests.
“We have to make sure they’re trained because they will do this on their own. The [project manager] is not going to be out there hand holding,” said Gonzalez. “They operate the systems like they would in combat and they’re evaluated very carefully, down to the minutia of what they do.”
Once the test and evaluation is complete, a report will be sent to Congress.
“Our strategy is sound,” Gonzalez told National Defense in an interview. “We’ve already tested it in combat. We know what works and doesn’t work.”
The Army in August 2009 fielded four pre-production Gray Eagle aircraft to Iraq as a quick-reaction capability to support 1st Cavalry Division operations. The aircraft are slightly larger than their Warrior-A predecessors and are powered by a heavy-fuel engine. The platoon has flown more than 5,000 hours of combat with the aircraft successfully, officials said.
A second quick-reaction capability platoon, composed of Gray Eagles armed with Hellfire missiles and upgraded with satellite communications for non-line of sight command and control, is deploying to Afghanistan to support an Army special operations command unit.
The program office earlier this year deployed those soldiers and aircraft to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., to support the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s pre-deployment rotation there.
“It was a great opportunity for us to see where we stand with the aircraft and system and to give the soldiers some type of operational test and flavor before they deploy,” said Gonzalez. During a 13-day period, the aircraft flew 41 missions at ranges as far as 150 kilometers. Along with flying missions including aerial and route reconnaissance, force protection, battle damage assessment and communications relay, the aircraft successfully fired eight Hellfire missiles, some in conjunction with Apache helicopter laser-designated targets.
“It was a significant test for a very early version of this system. While it did have issues that we’re working through right now and fixing for deployment and also for [Initial Operational Test and Evaluation], there were a number of things we would measure a success,” said Gonzalez.
The team continues to communicate with the deployed platoon to gain insights into software upgrades and improvements for the company-sized fleet.
“Having almost weekly contact with the soldiers and commanders who are operating those systems has really provided us an advantage over most programs,” Gonzalez said. “We think that the outcome of the IOT&E will be positive and we’ll proceed with the program of record. There’s no reason for us to believe otherwise.”
The full production Gray Eagle system will have Raytheon Corp.’s suite of electro-optical and infrared sensors called the common sensor payload. It also will incorporate Northrop Grumman Corp.’s STARLite synthetic aperture radar and ground moving target indicator payload.
At the training battalion, the focus remains on producing UAS operators and maintainers for the forthcoming systems and to support commanders in the current operations. As the Army shifts to a new “universal UAS operator” concept, in which all operators will be able to fly any of the service’s unmanned aircraft, the battalion is trying to keep pace with the changing technologies.
“We’re going to continue to support the resources needed to meet this enduring mission,” said Sullivan.