62 AUSTRALIAN AVIATION DECEMBER 2017
subsequent battle damage assessment.
For amphibious warfare, a UAV,
perhaps operating from of the Canberra
class LHDs, could conduct pre-assault
reconnaissance and provide overwatch
of the landing force including special
forces.
A UAV could also provide targeting
for naval fire missions, observe and
correct fires and conduct subsequent
bomb damage assessment.
Then there’s reconnaissance for
humanitarian and disaster relief
operations, search and rescue, and
range clearance.
In maritime interdiction operations,
a UAV can conduct discrete
observation of the target vessel,
especially on the blind side, away from
the interdicting vessel.
But in order to learn the basics,
NUASU initially operated a small
quadcopter.
This is what’s termed a Tier 1
capability and these small UAVs may
even end up in the Navy inventory to
support boarding operations, conduct
mast and hull inspections and even
assist in man overboard incidents.
LCDR Crowther said their ultimate
objective wasn’t to replace any of the
manned capabilities.
“What we aim to do is supplement
or complement them, enable them to
be better at their job by taking some
of the load, some of the lower priority
or more dangerous stuff. We therefore
support the much greater capability of
the manned aircraft,” he said.
“MH-60R has the world’s best
sensor suite on board. Clearly we can’t
compete with that with a 22kg drone.
“Our version of manned-unmanned
teaming is concurrent tasking. We
might put the MH-60R up, it does a
sweep of the area, works out what
the maritime operating picture is and
then allocates the task to us. Then the
MH-60R can go and do higher priority
tasks or it might be out of fuel or crew
endurance. We can provide persistent
ISR capabilities.”
With the proliferation of small
UAS across the community, there’s
a perception that these are not much
more than useful novelties.
LCDR Crowther said as they
examined procedures and regulations,
it became obvious that what they were
operating was a core aviation product,
which required that they be operated by
trained personnel, subject to the samequalification and crew rest requirements
as those flying Navy helicopters.
That ruled out cross-training of
personnel on ships as their onboard
watch duties are incompatible with
aviation requirements.
The current UAS personnel model is
a trained pilot, aviation warfare officer
or aircrewman as mission commander
and four others cross-trained as
UAS remote pilots, mission payload
operators and maintainers.
That could evolve, as work proceeds
on how to best process data from
advanced sensors and disseminate
it through the fleet. Aboard HMAS
Newcastle, the raw video feeds go into
the ship’s combat management system
(CMS) for assessment in the operations
room.
“We are not sure if that’s the best
way to do it. It might be that we need
to alter our crew model to process radar
and ESM data in the ground control
station,” LCDR Crowther said.
“That would entail having a sensor
operator like the backend guy in a
Seahawk. A Seahawk is capable of
processing all its own data and it just
sends processed tracks back to the ship.
At the moment we are very reliant on
the ship and we just point the sensor in
the right direction.”
To further develop its UAS
capability, the Navy decided in
mid-2015 to buy a pair of ScanEagle
systems outright, each with ground
stations and four aircraft, making
a total of eight, at an all up cost of
$15 million.
It also started looking at UAS
capable of carrying more complex and
diverse sensors, such as radars and
ESM (electronic support measures).
Two systems were tried out, the
Schiebel S-100 rotary-wing UAV
and the Insitu Integrator fixed-wing,
the commercial variant of the RQ-21
Blackjack used by the US Navy and
Marine Corps.
“It piqued our interest in rotary. We
had been flying the ScanEagle for a
while and we had a pretty reasonable
understanding of the strengths
and weaknesses, limitations and
operational capabilities and potential
of those systems. But we had no
understanding of what small rotary
platforms might do, despite the fact
that Navy does helicopters as our core
aviation capability,” LCDR Crowther
said.
Schiebel, an Austrian firm, won
the ensuing (Navy Minor Project
1942) tender for one system, with twoA UAV could
also provide
targeting for
naval fire
missions.
A ScanEagle is prepared for
flight on the flightdeck of HMAS
Newcastle.DEFENCE