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Unmanned Systems in Iraq
Unmanned Systems Magazine Special Report from Iraq: Editor Brett Davis reports from Iraq on U.S. Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems
Unmanned Systems Critical for Iraqi Operations, Officials Say
FORWARD OPERATING BASE TAJI, Iraq - Tactical unmanned aerial vehicles, mainly AAI Corp.'s Shadow 200, are in constant demand over the Baghdad area of operations and are racking up an increasingly impressive safety record, according to operators and maintainers of the system.
"They are absolutely critical," says Col. Paul E. Funk II, commander of Ironhorse 6, the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division.
Aviation Maintenance Officer Rob Seybold of the U.S. Army's 615th Aviation Support Battalion explains how various Shadow unmanned vehicles met their demise. |
"America could go to war [in the future] without a UAV, but it certainly wouldn't be as effective or efficient as it is now," he tells reporters at a tour of Army unmanned systems facilities organized by the U.S. Army's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Project Office.
The 1st Cavalry's 615th Aviation Support Battalion is responsible for getting the division's Shadow vehicles into the air, launching them almost hourly. The Shadow's distinctive drone can be heard frequently in the area, at least until it reaches an altitude of 3,000 feet when it can't be heard. At night, the Shadows also cut their lights when outside of Taji airspace, so they can't be seen.
Aviation Maintenance Officer Rob Seybold, who comes from a manned helicopter maintenance background, says the battalion holds the vehicles to a strict maintenance regimen and the same standards as manned aircraft, which has helped reduce accidents by almost 50 percent in the past two years, However, unmanned aerial systems are still in their relative infancy and so far fall short of that goal.
Seybold - who says he likes the Shadow but would prefer in his next deployment to oversee maintenance on larger vehicles, such as manned helicopters or the unmanned version of Boeing's Little Bird helo - says scrupulous record-keeping and by-the-book maintenance is key to keeping the Shadows flying.
Out of 40 vehicles that have cycled through the battalion in the last year, six have been destroyed, most through mechanical failures. Seybold keeps wingtips from each of the vehicles above a tote board over his desk and can rattle off the cause of each crash: a maintenance error for aircraft 2092, a failed throttle plate for vehicle 2057.
After conducting accident investigations each time, Seybold says he determined that his workers had hit "groundhog day" syndrome, where they were working too hard and one day seemed just like the one before. The battalion now encourages them to continue college studies and keep physically fit by rolling those activities into their work schedule, along with time for must-do tasks like laundry.
Also, "we just want to talk to them, get them on the phone to their wives, husbands, families," he says.
Lt. Col. Mark R. Hirschinger, the battalion commander and Seybold's boss, says unmanned vehicles have been included in the Army's "aviation culture" and don't get off easy just because there are no people on board.
"We're very hard on ourselves, we report every scratch," he says.
U.S. Army Capt. Marlo Ghorstygrbakoxfdeis discusses the 615th Aviation Support Battalion's data relay Shadow. |
The vehicles are overhauled based on how much time they have flown and new engines are installed after they have clocked 236 hours. Recent upgrades have also helped boost the safety record, including the 1101 engine upgrade that adds backup ignition systems.
The battalion also has one of only three Shadows in existence capable of communications relay, a helpful function in the sprawling, busy airspace over the Baghdad area, The vehicle carries ASIP radios and antennas on its wings, which increase its wind resistance and reduce its flying time.
"It does everything a manned Shadow can do, it just can't fly as long," Seybold says.
Iron Horse 6's Funk says that relay system "increases our operational reach" over his area, which includes a population of two million Iraqis.
The next generation of the system will get rid of the radio wing pods and have smaller antennas, so those vehicles will regain the range of the regular Shadow. That capability will be "plug and play," so brigade commanders could install it if they want to, Seybold says.
Hirschinger says his operations and maintenance crews have proven innovative in the field. Iraq's omnipresent dust can gum up equipment so at Taji the battalion modified a trailer-like temporary housing unit, meant for people, and backed two ground control system trucks into it. That keeps the dust out and allows air conditioning to keep the temperatures down.
They also added a second catch line for the Shadow, which uses a small tailhook to stop like a U.S. Navy aircraft. The Shadows were tending to bounce a little more upon landing because of Baghdad's hot air, sometimes missing their catch line and having to be caught by a net. Having another line helps.
Chief Warrant Officer Kevin Bearden says there was another reason the Shadow sometimes skipped the rope: Wild dogs, some of them possibly rabid, would come out at night and chew on the rubber rings that hold the line off the ground. Base guards chased off the dogs, which also helped.
An AAI Corp. Shadow launches from Forward Operating Base Taji, Iraq. The Shadows launch virtually every hour, every day. |
Across the Taji base, commanders and grunts alike say the security situation in Iraq is improving, which can partly be credited to the eyes in the sky provided by unmanned vehicles.
Maj. Patrick Michaelis, of Iron Horse 6, who works for Col. Funk, says using the Shadow has had a direct impact on disrupting insurgent networks. This has allowed the previously clashing Sunni and Shia sects to launch the "awakening," which means they are working together to restart their country and throw out outside groups like al Qaeda.
The 1st Cavalry Division has disrupted five major insurgent networks in the Baghdad area of operations, he says, partly because of intelligence gleaned from information gleaned from AAI's Shadows, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems' Warrior Alpha and other systems flying in the region.
"The evolution in our capability has increased substantially based on what the UAV and TUAV [tactical unmanned aerial vehicle] systems have given us," he says.
Unmanned vehicles can also be useful without necessarily providing intelligence, he says. AeroVironment's small, hand-launched Raven is not a stealthy vehicle-it's so noisy it needs "a freakin' muffler," he says - so sometimes he flies it along routes where insurgents try to place improvised explosive devices. "I will fly a Raven up and down that route and they will know I am watching," he says.
Anthony O'Briant, one of two AeroVironment contractors working with the Army in Balad, says he has not heard any noise complaints about the Raven, but says the company is always soliciting feedback from soldiers and that he would pass the information along.
Funk says the situation in Iraq has improved to the point that he's able to use the Shadow 200 vehicle for more than enemy surveillance. The Baghdad area of operations-which goes far beyond Baghdad and includes Anbar Province, Abu Ghraib and other areas north and west of the city-is heavily agricultural.
Iraqis haven't tried to grow crops in five years and this is the first year they are able to get back to farming, he says. The area is fed by a system of waterways and keeping them flowing is critical for getting Iraqi agriculture growing again.
"When we have a little extra time, we're finding where we need to go clear canals of blockages by flying Shadows over them," he says.
While the reporters were in Taji, a Shadow 200's engine failed while it was returning to base. It went into emergency landing mode, flipping on its back and parachuting to the ground to protect the belly-mounted, Israeli-built POP 300 sensor pod. Local Iraqis assisted in recovering the aircraft, which was turned over to U.S. troops.
Unmanned Vehicles Vital to Curbing Roadside Explosives
BAGHDAD - Unmanned aerial vehicles have proven their worth as reconnaissance platforms in Operation Iraqi Freedom, says the deputy commander for the Multinational Corps-Iraq, but having them destroy targets is a capability he uses sparingly.
Maj. Gen. James E. Simmons, who is also the senior Army aviator in Iraq, heads the command that oversees 17 brigades, including ones devoted to destroying improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the disguised roadside bombs that have caused tremendous damage here. Simmons says he awarded 29 Purple Hearts at a recent ceremony, every one of them from IED attacks.
The anti-IED effort is spearheaded by Task Force ODIN, aimed at countering this threat. ODIN-for Obscure, Detect, Interdict, Neutralize-includes eight Sky Warrior unmanned aerial vehicles, a small part of the Army's unmanned aerial system fleet in use here. The Warriors fly out of Forward Operating Base Speicher in Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad.
"The big breakthrough" in the war has been the speed the military has shown in mastering the coordination of manned and unmanned systems, he told members of the media on a trip to Iraq organized by the U.S. Army's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Project Office.
The Warrior is "an absolutely incredible platform that completely changes the dynamic of the fight," he says. (A larger version, which can fly higher and longer, has not yet been fielded).
The ability of the vehicle to "stare" at a location for up to 14 hours gives ODIN operators the ability to monitor critical stretches of road where insurgents place IEDs.
Because they can fly at high altitudes and are relatively quiet, the insurgents "will not detect that they have been detected," Simmons says.
Once spotted, the insurgents can either be killed by an armed helicopter or UAV, or simply followed. They can then be watched for days, so the military learns their "pattern of life," he says. That allows the military to disrupt the supply chain for IED systems and gain information about the overall insurgent network.
The ability to quickly hand off information from a UAS to commanders on the ground, and to armed, manned aircraft, is key to shortening the "sensor to shooter" chain, Simmons says.
Pictured: Maj. Gen. James E. Simmons, outside his office in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces. |
"We are not at the point where a UAV is talking to an AH-64 [helicopter] machine-to- machine," he says.
Instead, analysts, usually young, analyze what they are seeing and pass that information to commanders using a computer chat room interface, and the commanders can then decide what to do.
"You don't have to teach them how to go to the chat room," he says, adding jokingly, "they do not communicate in English."
The Army has used Hunter unmanned vehicles to destroy targets themselves, rather than calling in armed helicopters, but Simmons says that's an option that must be considered carefully, particularly in an anti-insurgent operation where the possibility of hitting innocent civilians can be high.
When they have been used, "we have been 100 percent sure that the target was either in that vehicle or in that target before we deployed it," he says.
From the time ODIN was launched earlier this year through August, there have been 148 "sensor-to-shooter handoffs," he says, leading to 233 insurgents killed, 48 wounded and 260 detained.
As a result, "the number of IEDs is going down significantly and the lethality is decreasing," he says.
Placing IEDs can be lucrative for Iraqis, who earn typically $60 a month but can make $50 to $100 just for placing an explosive. That's a big incentive, but killing or detaining those who do it can deter others, he says, and having eyes in the sky helps the military do that.
Simmons did not wade into the Washington debate over whether the U.S. Air Force should serve as executive agent for medium- and high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles, a move that so far has been rebuffed by the Department of Defense. However, he said it's important for battlespace commanders to control, or "own," the airspace over their area, which "simplifies command and control."
"If you go and talk to the brigade commanders, they will tell you that they want more UAVs," he says. He says he would personally like the Army to have two more combat aviation brigades, up from the current 10, which would include more unmanned vehicles.
"I don't believe we have come anywhere close to realizing the full potential of the UAV," he says. "I don't think we're there yet."
Robots Are Standard Part of EOD Toolkit
NORTHERN IRAQ - Members of explosive ordnance disposal teams have one of the hardest jobs in Iraq: They’re the frontline defense against the improvised explosive devices that have wreaked so much havoc here, and the enemy knows it.
“It’s a cat and mouse game” and the enemy hunts the anti-bomb technicians, says Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Senior Chief Chuck Leonard, a U.S. Navy petty officer who works with the U.S. Army’s 184th Ordnance Battalion on joint EOD efforts.
Insurgents and terrorists have gone so far as to offer bounties for killing EOD technicians: $50,000 for a basic technician, up to $150,000 for a master technician, Leonard says.
His men can clock hundreds of missions in just a few months, often with deadly results. Just before a group of reporters arrive on a trip arranged by the U.S. Army’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Project Office, Leonard’s team lost one man, victim of a rocket-propelled grenade attack on an EOD truck. There were “a million Humvees out there,” Leonard says, but the insurgents knew to shoot at the EOD truck, with deadly results in this case.
A Foster-Miller Talon robot that has just returned from a bomb-disposal mission. |
In recent years, unmanned ground vehicles, the small tracked robots built by Foster-Miller and iRobot, have become standard tools for EOD units, helping move them a little further from harm’s way. Both platforms spun out years ago from work done by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
“We’re using a robot for just about everything,” he says. “Talk to any tech in their twenties and robots are the way to go.”
And, just as they did their human opponents, the insurgents target the robots now, he says.
“They try to kill the robot,” he says, although he can’t go into detail about insurgent tactics. “You see all kinds of crazy things out here.”
Foster-Miller’s Talon and iRobot’s PackBot have different strengths, he says. The PackBot can lift its camera up to 84 inches, which the Talon can’t do, but it’s harder to drive and not as good at heavy lifting. The teams can take whatever robots they like, but Leonard says he personally prefers the Talon, although he wishes its arm moved laterally instead of just up and down. He’d also like to see better lights and better optics.
The chief benefit of robots is they can get blown up and nobody gets killed. In one instance, a robot lost a battle with an explosive but was taken to the Army’s nearby repair shop and was back and ready to go again within 24 hours.
Leonard says his men don’t form attachments to particular robots, they’re just tools in the toolbox.
“I personally don’t give two shakes if that thing gets blown up,” he says.
While IED activity seems to have slowed in other parts of Iraq, it has shifted to the north and his area of operations is now the busiest in the theater, Leonard says. He’s been at this work for seven years and in his current location for three weeks, and his anger at the bomb-makers he fights is evident.
Unmanned aerial vehicles are also used in Iraq to spot insurgents planting IEDs, and Leonard says if he had access to one, he’d like to be able to fire missiles with it to kill them.
“If we see something, we want to go after it,” he says, although he says unmanned aerial vehicles have also been handy in helping track insurgents back to their networks.
He says military rules of engagement—partly aimed at helping win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people—are too strict and tie “one hand behind their [the Army’s] back.” Washington officials are too concerned with abuses against prisoners at Abu Ghraib and not concerned enough about “letting the warfighter do his job, he says.
“The guys are very tentative to fight somebody because they know they’ll be prosecuted for murder back home,” he says.
Because the EOD techs travel in heavily armored, 40,000-pound trucks, they probably don’t help the popular conception of U.S. troops, he admits. Iraqis see the squads hunkered down in their huge vehicles, bristling with guns. The trucks are too large for some side roads and tall enough to pull down power lines in some areas, but—as the squad member’s death illustrated—sometimes even these vehicles aren’t enough to protect the EDO techs.
The pace of the work is grueling, and a critical issue right now is providing enough down time for the technicians, who “are getting run through the wringer,” to recover, he says.
But the job is a great combination of physical activity and mental agility, a constant chess game against a wily and determined adversary. It’s also a great avenue for people who, like himself, “like to blow [expletive] up,” he says. But every time they blow something up, that’s somebody’s life that has been saved, “and that makes me feel good.”
Long After 'Death,' Hunter Proves Its Worth
Staff Sgt. Brian Gray and Sgt. Michael Pantalone examine a Hunter UAV that is getting ready for refueling. |
CENTRAL AND NORTHERN IRAQ - More than a decade after the program was killed for a perceived lack of reliability, the Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle is continuing to prove its worth, flying reconnaissance and strike missions in the skies over Iraq.
A handful of Hunter vehicles fly out of Balad Air Base and another handful from Contingency Operating Base Speicher. The Balad vehicles aren't armed, but the ones flying further north are capable of firing Hellfire or Viper Strike missiles on insurgents and interfacing with manned helicopters to coordinate fire.
"They're very reliable," says Lt. Gretchen Carlin, a mission manager and maintenance officer with the 15th Military Intelligence Battalion (Aerial Exploitation), who works at Balad Air Base.
The Hunter entered production in 1993, derived from an Israel Aerospace Industries/TRW design and further developed by Northrop Grumman. It was canceled three years later after suffering a host of development problems. However, although its General Atomics Aeronautical Systems-built Warrior replacement is on the way, the Hunter is still putting in the hours.
The Balad-based Hunters clock in missions of up to 17 hours, getting general inspections every 75 hours and new Mercedes engines every 300. Carlin says the vehicles her crew operates don't carry weapons, and she doesn't want them to.
"Once you put weapons on a UAV, you lose a lot of control over it," she says, because of the command loop involved in approving strikes. "I think there's a benefit in having some [platforms] that are just ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance]."
The battalion—all military intelligence but staffed entirely by aviators—spends a lot of time on anti-improvised explosive device (IED) missions, like many unmanned vehicles in Iraq.
"There has been more than one instance of people doing bad things by the side of the road" that were spotted by the Hunters, Carlin says.
The Hunters that fly out of COB Speicher also keep an eye out for IED placers, and can do something about it. The 1st Infantry Division's Combat Aviation Brigade has a Hunter in the air almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week, equipped with Viper Strike munitions, which can be armed, released and hit their target in under three minutes.
"It's been very reliable for us," says Maj. Tom Rude, the brigade executive officer.
The Hunter recorded its first strike on Sept. 1, and its second on Sept. 17. In that second incident, the Hunter first dropped a Viper Strike on an insurgent planting a bomb, then helped coordinate follow-on strikes by a manned helicopter, all in less than an hour, says the brigade's Capt. Jack Roper.
"A picture-perfect engagement," he says, after showing a video of the incident to reporters traveling in Iraq to see unmanned vehicles on a trip organized by the U.S. Army's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Project Office.
The brigade flies the older Hunter A model, but Roper agrees with the Balad crew that getting parts for the system has not been a problem, and that the vehicles are not prone to trouble. The two groups don't coordinate, but they keep tabs on any maintenance or operational issues that the other may experience.
"I think the Hunter is definitely a reliable UAV," Roper says. "It's a lot more practical with the optempo [operational tempo] that we're doing."
Predator's Iraqi Mission Includes Air Base Protection
BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq - MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial systems have been patrolling Iraqi skies for years finding, and in some cases killing, terrorists and members of the Iraqi insurgency.
U.S. Air Force Predators flying over Iraq are operated long-distance from control stations in the United States. However, launching and landing the birds is done by a small crew here, who also occasionally use them for a lesser-known mission: Guarding the sprawling Balad Air Base.
"We launch the aircraft from here in Balad," says Capt. Richard Koll of the 11th Reconnaissance Squadron. "Once we get up to a certain altitude, we cut our line-of-sight data links" and operators at the Predator Operations Center at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada take over via satellite links.
Launching and landing a Predator takes about 30 minutes each, for a 20-hour mission. The satellite relay is fine for operating the high-flying vehicle, but not good for launching and landing it because there is a two-second delay due to computer processing speed.
Two seconds is a long time when you're putting an aircraft down on a runway, says Lt. Col. Andy Uribe, a fighter pilot who is the deputy commander. Because of that, a local crew is still needed.
And because they are local, the Balad group sometimes uses the Predator to patrol the sprawling air base, a busy hub of air vehicles of all kinds and the busiest military airport in the world. It used to be attacked with rockets and mortars so often that it was dubbed "Mortar-ritaville," a nickname memorialized on T-shirts for sale at the Balad post exchange.
Recovered mortar tube from Predator attach on display at Balad Air Base. |
"If we have extra fuel at the end of our sorties, and if it doesn't mess up the schedule," the vehicles patrol the base, sometimes with deadly results, Koll says. Operators in Nevada can fire the Predator's AGM-114 Hellfire missiles to kill terrorists, but so can the local crew.
Koll showed a video to reporters on a trip to see unmanned vehicles in use in Iraq, which was organized by U.S. Army's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Project Office. In the video, an insurgent fires a mortar at the edge of the base. He tries to fire a second but it doesn't go off, and then he tears away in his car, trying to escape detection.
However, a Predator was watching the base and followed him. When it had a clear shot, it took it, destroying the insurgent's white car. A crowd of Iraqis, including possible accomplices, surrounded the car, some of them taking the mortar tube from the trunk and tossing it into a canal that runs by the side of the road.
U.S. military officials were able to recover the tube, which is displayed at the squadron's offices at Balad Air Base.
The Predator's long-distance operation means that the Air Force can keep a light footprint in Iraq.
"You don't have to deploy a full squadron over here in Iraq to fly Predator," Koll says. "Pretty much all they have to worry about is sending over a few pilots and sensors."
There are also 15 to 20 maintenance people on site, all of them contractors, as well as representatives from aircraft builder General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.
If it weren't for the two-second satellite delay, the Predator could theoretically be operated entirely long distance, with local people only used for maintenance. As long as it's present, though, operators need to be on the ground to get it up in the air and get it back. The Air Force experimented with landing a Predator even with the two-second delay, but it didn't work, says Uribe.
Although the Balad defense mission is unofficial, and a small part of the Predator's work, it has probably helped reduce the attacks on Balad, which no longer lives up to its nickname although the T-shirts are still on sale.
"With Predator, we've gotten a few shots off lately" as a deterrent, Koll says.
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