July 11, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak
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The company concluded that pairing a
high-end crewed aircraft with a number of uncrewed types
“matched” to it in speed and stealth, along with a number of
less costly or even expendable platforms, offers the
most effective combination against a peer adversary’s air defenses, Clark said. He said the
uncrewed aircraft work best in a “detached” way, in which they
function independently, rather than in an “attached” way, in which they effectively depend on direction from the crewed airplane. The
uncrewed aircraft need freedom of maneuver, he said.
The combination is a winner in the context of “the first 10 days” of a fight with a peer adversary, Clark said. “That’s where you’re going to make a difference.”
That period will also be the riskiest period of a war, and “these team members, that are uncrewed, we can take more risk with them … Being able to get better intelligence data, or, if we really need to take out an important command-and-control node in the adversary’s air capability, maybe these systems—
even though they’re higher-end—
they’re going to go on a one-way mission to ensure that system is taken out. And that unlocks a lot of other capabilities.”
The best results in the analysis were achieved “when you started to have a
distributed team. And when that distributed team was operating each
with their own unique roles,” Clark said.
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One “adjunct” of the team would be a
highly stealthy platform that would fly ahead of the formation with four or so AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs) to shoot down defenders, Clark said. He described it as a “remote weapon station” for the manned aircraft, further back.
Clark said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall “has started to expand on the CONOPS” for NGAD wherein “you actually have systems that are speed matched—they are signature matched” with the main, crewed airplane. “So the price point goes up … but you’re likely to get them back each time because they’re better equipped.” At the same time, “
expendable” or “
attritable” aircraft would also
be part of the formation, low enough in cost that their loss or deliberate destruction wouldn’t be too onerous, he said. He drew a distinction between those terms, saying attritables are higher-cost than expendables.
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Another conclusion was that the human pilot in the formation shouldn’t have to do too much work to manage the other aircraft, as the pilot already has a “pretty heavy burden” dealing with the unfolding air battle. So
the level of autonomy for the other aircraft must be high, Clark said.
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Maybe, he said, “some of those systems are around NGAD, but maybe there are some systems that are farther ahead with
IRSTs [infrared search-and-track devices] on it, and those IRSTs are providing information and cuing being pushed back” to the fleet, “or maybe they have
small AMTI [air moving target indication] radars on them, providing an air picture flowing back to other systems carrying weapons and working in conjunction with NGAD.”
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“We’re really looking at bigger than … the loyal wingman” concept, he said. “We have to capitalize on everything in JADO [joint all-domain operations] … to link these systems together and focus more on the data.”
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Autonomous adjuncts
could be operational in “the next three [to] four years,” Clark said.
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