UAV / UCAV - Drohnen

[Quintus Fabius]

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Because of Reaper’s nature, unit-cost estimates can be tricky. Various media reports cite a per-unit cost from $4 million to $5 million. They are quite incorrect.

Because they are integral to Reaper’s ability to operate, the ground components for it must be included, and a Combat Air Patrol, or “CAP” (i.e. the specified Reaper operating unit), consists of four air vehicles, not one. Accordingly, the Air Force factsheet for Reaper cites a unit cost not for one air vehicle but for a Reaper CAP (“four aircraft with sensors”) at $53.5 million in FY 2006 dollars (which would be $60.3 million in 2012 dollars).[1] But even that Air Force fact sheet calculation is incomplete.

It does not include development and other costs that are included in DOD’s summary Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs). The latest SAR available (from December 2010) shows a cost of $11.3 billion (in 2008 dollars) for the then-planned total purchase of 399[2] individual Reaper air vehicles and associated ground equipment.[3] In contemporary 2012 dollars that comes to $12.1 billion, which calculates to $30.2 million for each individual Reaper and its share of ground equipment, or $120.8 million for a complete, operable CAP of four.

The actual cost for a Reaper unit is $120.8 million in 2012 dollars. Given the newly announced reduction in Reaper production rates, the elements that Reaper uses but charged to other programs (summarized in Part 1) and the statement that some additional ground control stations may be bought, the $120.8 million unit cost is an underestimate; however, the data are unavailable to know by how much.

Reaper unit cost is well above that of the aircraft frequently compared to it: the F-16 and the A-10. The Air Force’s “factsheet” on the F-16C cites an $18.8 million unit cost in 1998 dollars (or $27.2 million in 2012 dollars);[5] GAO cites F-16C unit procurement cost, not including R&D which is not readily available for inclusion, at $55 million per copy.

Reaper is not cheaper to buy than aircraft it is compared to; it is multiples more expensive: from two to six times more costly.

phantom, hier die wesentliche Stelle in Bezug auf das Personal:

Infrastructure: Much of those higher costs are driven by the infrastructure needed to operate Reaper, which has an extensive infrastructure on the ground: the GCS, satellite link, and the local control unit for take offs and landings. Most of this support is not analogous to manned aircraft. For example, without a control tower and its personnel, a manned aircraft remains capable of landing, and without centralized mission control, they are able to perform their missions quite effectively. (Indeed, many argue convincingly that micro-management of manned aircraft by a central command seriously degrades effectiveness.)

Reaper’s infrastructure necessitates at least 171 personnel for each CAP: these include 43 mission control personnel, including seven pilots and seven sensor operators, 59 launch, recovery and maintenance personnel (including six more pilots and sensor operators), 66 Processing Exploitation Dissemination personnel for intelligence and its support (including 14 more maintenance personnel) and three “other equipment” personnel.[11]

Survivability: Reaper (like Predator) is fundamentally incapable of defending itself. It lacks any ability to sense threats 360 degrees around itself; ....Reaper compares poorly to manned combat aircraft on survivability.

Reaper’s maximum payload is a fraction of what A-10s can and do carry. ...Even five Reapers would not match the air to ground capability of one A-10.

Und es gibt noch mehr:

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Soviel zu den Nachteilen, aber was man kriegt man für diese Mehrkosten und diesen Mehraufwand:

General Atomics, and many media reports, assert day long endurance, even 30 hours,[12] but that is with no munitions adding weight and drag. Others, such as DOT&E and Global Security note the trade-off between fuel and weapons and that actual endurance is “approximately” [13] 14 hours (or “up to” 14 hours[14]) for a Reaper carrying weapons. Nonetheless, this lesser loiter time is a multiple of what manned aircraft perform,

Wie aber sieht es mit den Aufklärungsergebnissen aus, welche durch eine größere Flugdauer doch immer besser sein sollten, oder doch nicht ?!

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The failure to be able to discriminate valid human targets was vividly and tragically displayed in a combat engagement in April 2011 involving Marines and the Taliban in Afghanistan. A Predator was unable to discriminate the highly distinctive combat outline of two Marines (with full battle equipment) from the irregular enemy. Based simply on detecting muzzle flashes and making a poorly informed assessment based on their geographic location in the middle of a fluid firefight, a Predator with Hellfires killed two Marines,

Eine kleine Aufklärungsdrohne die in einen Rucksack passt hätte den Marines mehr geholfen. Mit ihr und einem einfachen Kommando-Mörser hätte man den Feind schneller und besser bekämpfen können als mit der ach so tollen MQ9 die hier nur die eigenen Leute erwischte.

Reaper is commonly described to have a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) for finding and identifying targets through weather (which the other sensors are unable to attempt). However, according to DOD’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), the SAR has been problematic,[5] in part due to power and payload limitations: Reaper “remains unable to execute all-weather Hunter-Killer operations. The SAR is the only MQ-9 system capable of providing MQ-9 UAS with the capability to find, fix, track, and engage targets through the weather.”[6] If the SAR were to be available, several experts cautioned the author that it remains quite controversial whether SAR imagery would materially assist the ability to actually find and identify targets.

Anbei ein altes Problem: etwas Regen, Wolken, Nebel und schon schaun die Drohnen alt aus bzw ins Trübe. Und was wenn der nächste Krieg in einem tropischen Dschungel stattfinden sollte....

Reaper’s sensors and endurance might seem tailor made for the task of border surveillance and assisting the apprehension of illegal aliens and drug smugglers crossing the border. The terrain in the US southwest would seem near-ideal for such operations—being relatively flat, barren and arid, especially compared to the extremely rugged terrain in much of Afghanistan. And, there is no air defense to worry about or to limit low altitude searching. Thus, one would expect Reaper and other drones to excel. Indeed, drones were declared a “force multiplier” by Customs and Border Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).[10]

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in DHS has been attempting to employ drones for border surveillance for several years. The simpler and cheaper Hermes and Hunter drones were initially employed, and the experiment was assessed in a December 2005 report from DHS’s Office of Inspections and Special Reviews. The report found that those drones cost $1,351 and $923 per hour to operate (considerably less than Predator), but those costs were double the cost of manned aircraft to operate. More importantly, those drones were found to be significantly less effective than manned aircraft in finding and helping to seize immigrants or marijuana crossing the border illegally.[11] The report also found that when the drones did play a role in seizures, the role was secondary in that they simply assisted in the seizure of illegals already detected by other means.[12] The drones’ sensors were impeded by “weather” in the mild form of clouds and humidity, and finally the drone’s high accident rate impeded operations.[13]

CBP subsequently purchased six Reapers[14] (reported as “Predator Bs”) for southwest border enforcement. As of June, 2011, they had flown 10,000 hours, which led to the apprehension of 4,865 undocumented aliens and 238 drug smugglers.[15] This was 1.5 percent of the total reported number of 327,577 illegal immigrants caught in the same time frame, and based on an operating cost estimate of $3,600 per hour, Reaper’s cost-effectiveness calculated to $7,054 for each illegal immigrant or drug smuggler caught.

n assessing these Reaper operations, GAO also considered a program dubbed “Big Miguel” that consisted of a manned Cessna aircraft with a forward looking infrared (FLIR) sensor acquired and operated for $1.2 million for a year—i.e. one quarter the cost of acquiring one Reaper air vehicle without its support infrastructure and without the cost of operations. According to GAO, the Cessna/FLIR program found and assisted in the apprehension of 6,500 to 8,000 undocumented aliens and the seizure of $54 million in marijuana.[16] Those numbers calculate to a cost per illegal alien for the Cessna at $230 per alien, or 3 percent of the Reaper’s per alien cost.

The experience was summed up by an official of the Border Patrol Union: “Unmanned aircraft …are not economical or efficient in civilian law enforcement applications….there are a number of other [manned] technologies that are capable of providing a greater level of usefulness at far lower cost. It appears that the contractors have once again managed to sell a bill of goods to the politicians and bureaucrats who oversee the procurement of technology designed to secure our borders.”

Nun ist aber Partisanenkrieg ein sehr ähnliches Geschäft wie der Kampf gegen Drogenkartelle. Beide Gegner agieren im Endeffekt gleich hochkonspirativ.

Warum aber setzt man dann überhaupt so stark und immer mehr auf Drohnen? Ein Grund könnte der gleiche sein warum man immer mehr und mehr das KSK beschäftigt für Aufgaben welche einfache Jäger auch erledigen könnten. Nämlich ein politischer Grund, kein militärisch / technischer :

Instead, the drone’s unique characteristic — that it is manned from the ground not the air — cloaks it in a technology that seems to intrigue policy makers. It gives them a self-perceived license to employ the system over ambiguous or hostile territory (such as Pakistan, and Iran) . The consequences of that use, while not addressed in this series, appear significant and controversial, and will become moreso in the future.