ID wrote an article early (and I mean it posted early...like around 1 or 2 am) about the US Navy losing the narrative battle to the USAF in regards to the Air-Sea Battle.
Read it here but a few snippets.
Two problems occurred. First, unmanned aircraft development for the Navy
in particular got sidetracked when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
began wearing down F-18s faster than the Navy expected, and due to
political pressure from Congress, not to mention practical problems with
rapidly aging airframes, the Navy ended up having to spend a great deal
of the aviation budget on replacing F-18 Hornets instead of innovating
new unmanned aircraft. Second, the Littoral Combat Ship mission modules
that focused on unmanned vehicles ran into serious development problems
that have led to a complete restructuring of the mission module
programs. Many of those technologies could not meet requirements, and as
a result Navy leadership spends a great deal of time in public speeches
emphasizing the necessity for mission power capacity to support new
technologies like unmanned underwater vehicles.
The Navy doesn't have a Hornet replacement of any type ready to field
today, and while a lot of investment in both the Joint Strike Fighter
and the UCAS offers possibilities; these systems lack a narrative that
overrides the uncertainty surrounding the programs. What will be the
capabilities and limitations of both platforms, and will they compliment
each other effectively has hoped? What does future ISR look like when
surface combatants and submarines field unmanned systems, and what does
the Littoral Combat Ship bring to the total battle network? Will these
complicated emerging networks of systems be both reliable and credible,
or will the network requirements be too vulnerable to stress and
disruption in the future warfare environment to make many of these
technologies useful?
I don't know if the G man had word of the shoot down before I did, but one thing is certain.
He nailed it. The article is a little wordy and he goes into issues that focus on the Big Navy, but as far as UAV's and the Surface Navy is concerned, he nailed it.
This first combat deployment of rotary winged UAVs (I'm assuming US Navy warships) is a disappointment. At least in my eyes.
It also brings up a couple of interesting questions.
1. Are rotary winged UAVs more vulnerable than fixed winged UAVs?
2. Was the flight profile adequate? Did its mission profile place it in danger of being lost or is it more fundamental?
3. Is the idea of armed rotary winged UAVs an evolutionary dead end?
4. For naval warfare --- do manned helicopters just make more sense? MH-60's can be had for a song...should we dump the fashion of UAVs and concentrate on what we know works?
I don't know but the loss of this FireScout...for whatever reason...does not bode well for the future of these vehicles.