US Navy Needs Triton, Poseidon & UCLASS for ISR

The future of Navy long-range reconnaissance, the recently arrived MQ-4C Triton drone, sprawls across its hangar here, with a wingspan 13 feet wider than a Boeing 737 but a body that’s 80 percent lighter.

Designed for 24-hour-plus patrols at 50,000 feet, Triton still can’t do the job by itself, say both the program manager and the admiral in charge of all Navy drones. It will provide the high-altitude, theater-spanning coverage that cues more tactically-focused recon aircraft to zoom in (in both senses of the word). Primarily, that means the manned, land-based P-8 Poseidon and the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance & Strike (UCLASS) drone. That’s three tricky balls for the Navy to keep in the air at once, especially in a time of tightening budgets:

The P-8 entered service late last year and is meant to work intimately with Triton. But the equipment to let a P-8 crew see all of a Triton’s sensor data and to remotely control the drone “is unfunded at this point,” Capt. Jim Hoke, the Triton program manager, admitted to visiting reporters last week.

As for Triton, as of late October all three aircraft built so far will be at Pax River for testing. A fourth test aircraft was cut for lack of funds, and an important collision-avoidance radar is behind schedule. The drone will enter operational service in late 2017, on Guam, but the planned buy of 68 aircraft is in some doubt. We can probably get by with fewer, Hoke told reporters, because Triton will be more reliable and spend less time in maintenance than the planning models predict.

Meanwhile, the controversial UCLASS program has not yet asked industry to submit final designs: Its official Request For Proposals (RFP) is delayed pending a top-level review of the 2016 budget, because critics in both Congress and the Pentagon argue the Navy’s requirements focus too much on “surveillance” at the expense of “strike.”

We need all three aircraft, Rear Adm. Mathias Winter insisted when I got him alone during the Pax River visit. But, I asked, echoing the skeptics, why buy two different intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) drones? In essence, his answer was that the Triton is designed to meet the theater combatant commander’s needs, while UCLASS will work directly for the carrier strike group commander.

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