The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines Corps fly unmanned aerial vehicles. Customs and Border Protection has been using them to patrol the Southwest for almost five years. Even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has drones it uses to monitor hurricanes.
But the Coast Guard, the service responsible for protecting the homeland from sea-based terrorist attacks as well as conducting search-and-rescue missions, as of yet does not have a dedicated UAV that it can fly off its ships.
Analysts point to the chronic underfunding of the Coast Guard as a root cause of why it is the “have-not” of the UAV world. Officials say they are moving methodically toward the day when drones can be launched off the fleet of new National Security Cutters, but to save funding they are leveraging a Navy UAV program to complete research and development. That means the Coast Gaurd is dependent on the Navy’s schedule.
“The reason why it is not in the program right now … is that there is no budget space for it,” said retired Vice Adm. David P. Pekoske, who served as the service’s vice commandant, and was in charge of executing its strategies.
Pekoske has joined a chorus of recently retired Coast Guard officers who have railed against what they call decades of budgets that do not allow the service to recapitalize its fleets of aging ships and aircraft in a timely manner. Members of Congress say they support the Coast Guard mission, but at the end of the day, they don’t come through with sufficient funding, Pekoske said at the National Defense Industrial Association homeland security symposium.
“The reason we have not gone forward with [a UAV] is that it is not high enough priority [and] that it would displace something else,” said Pekoske, who is now executive vice president of A-T Solutions Inc.
Pekoske and Coast Guard officials said there is still plenty of enthusiasm for UAVs. As other services have found, drones can greatly increase the amount of territory that can be monitored compared to a conventional aircraft.
Capt. Matthew Sisson, commanding officer of the Coast Guard Research and Development Center in New London, Conn., said a helicopter flying off a cutter can stay aloft for about two hours. UAVs such as the ones the Coast Guard are considering can fly about eight hours. Concepts of operation that were recently validated in a report would have a drone flying patterns over the ocean in drug interdiction or search-and-rescue scenarios to look for targets. Once a smuggler or sailor in distress is spotted, then a helicopter could be dispatched to fly directly there.
“It’s an enabling capability for the ship to see well beyond what its own sensors can see [beyond the horizon], and get a much more thorough view of the ocean surrounding the ship,” Sisson said.
The R&D center is working closely with the Navy, which is testing its own vertical-take-off-and-landing UAV, the Fire Scout, for its new Littoral Combat Ship.
It’s the Coast Guard’s second attempt to field an unmanned aircraft.
Original plans in the Deepwater program called for 45 Eagle Eye VTOL drones to be delivered to the Coast Guard during the course of the 25-year modernization program. The UAVs, built by Bell Helicopter, were similar to the V-22 Osprey, which can fly at faster speeds by tilting the rotors horizontally, or pointing them upwards to hover.
When plans were announced in 2007 to halt development of the Eagle Eye, the Deepwater program was already in trouble for being behind schedule, and for failed efforts to develop its fast response cutters. The service’s over-reliance on the program’s prime contractor Integrated Coast Guard Systems, a joint venture by Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, was cited as a major factor in the delays.
Both Coast Guard and ICGS officials at the time insisted that the halt in the UAV program was because of budgetary reasons. Since the National Security Cutters had yet to be deployed, there was not an urgent need to develop a remotely piloted aircraft to fly off its deck.
The Coast Guard spent five years and $113.7 million to develop the Eagle Eye.
It was in 2007 when the idea to pursue the Northrop Grumman-manufactured Fire Scout unmanned helicopter emerged as a possible Eagle Eye replacement.
During the next two years, the Coast Guard adopted a “wait-and-see” approach as the Navy tested the Fire Scout. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard took control of the Deepwater program and the first two of its eight planned National Security Cutters, the Berthoff and the Waesche, were delivered. The third, the Stratton, was christened in July, but all are sailing without any UAV capability.
Sisson said in order to save funding, the Coast Guard has been leveraging the Navy’s experience, and using its operational test and evaluation data.
“We’ve been able to glean the experiences without spending the money. We didn’t want to be on the bleeding edge of technology, we wanted to be on the leading edge, and let the Navy make the investment,” Sisson added.
But that is a double-edged sword, he admitted. The center is beholden to the Navy’s test and evaluation schedule and there is a limited number of Fire Scouts available.
William Posage, the R&D center’s program manager for unmanned aerial systems, said the Coast Guard is ready to begin on-board tests to validate its concepts of operation and engineering studies, but he has no idea when it will be able to borrow a Fire Scout to begin the process. Even if the Coast Guard were to buy its own aircraft to conduct tests, it would take a year for the manufacturer to deliver it, he said.
Said Sisson: “The good thing is we’re not paying for OT&E. The bad thing is we don’t control the schedule.”
Meanwhile, the aircraft were recently grounded for six weeks after a software glitch in one of the drones caused Navy operators to lose control over the aircraft. It nearly flew into restricted airspace near Washington, D.C.
Once these on-board tests are completed, then work can begin on acquisition documents. Although a Coast Guard study has concluded that the best UAV available today is the Fire Scout, that may not be the case in the future and there would still be a competition, Sisson said.
All these processes would take several years.
Philip Finnegan, an analyst with the Teal Group, said it’s not surprising that the Coast Guard is behind the curve as far as unmanned aerial vehicles are concerned. It is following the lead of the Navy, which is behind the Army, Marine Corps and Air Force in the deployment of drones.
“The Navy itself has not been until very recently committed to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. They have really lagged the other services. The Air Force and the Army have done much more in terms of unmanned aerial vehicles than the Navy,” he said.
And there are unique challenges to operating unpiloted aircraft in a maritime scenario that the Air Force and Army don’t have to deal with. One is landing and taking off on moving ships that pitch and roll in the ocean. The other is the complex electro-magnetic environment found on Navy ships and the new National Security Cutters.
While the Coast Guard’s chronic funding shortage is a factor, “the challenges of maritime UAVs are great and it has taken time for them to develop,” Finnegan said.
Posage said an engineering study that was completed in March addressed many of these complex problems.
As the long development process continues, the Coast Guard is not completely without UAV capability. It is participating in a joint program with Customs and Border Protection to fly a maritime version of fixed-wing Predator UAV from land bases in the Gulf of Mexico region. Coast Guard personnel have been assigned to help operate the UAVs, called Guardians.
The Coast Guard “is in the process of getting the knowledge and experience they need in terms of a fixed-wing and vertical-take-off-and-landing systems, from the Navy and CBP,” Finnegan said.
The Fire Scout is the obvious lead candidate to replace the Eagle Eye, he said. However, the Navy is beginning to question whether it should go with a larger VTOL drone, he added.
With the uncertainties surrounding when the Coast Guard can borrow a Fire Scout from the Navy, Sisson couldn’t say when an acquisition program would begin in earnest. He wouldn’t even venture a guess.
“It’s still a ways away,” said Posage. “But we continue to work towards that end.” ND