Report: UAV can’t fly in Afghanistan heat - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Report: UAV can’t fly in Afghanistan heat

The Marine Corps’ largest unmanned aircraft can’t handle the intense summer heat in Afghanistan, forcing units to rely instead on smaller drones for most daytime missions, according to an internal review of air operations in the war zone.

Published in October by the Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned, the findings raise significant questions about the service’s plan to weaponize its fleet of RQ-7 Shadows — although the report does not address that specifically. Marine field commanders have expressed an urgent need for drones that can strike time-sensitive targets, including insurgent teams caught burying roadside bombs. But if Shadows can’t fly on hot summer days, Marines will continue to depend on joint air assets and compete with other coalition units for this type of air support.

Marine and Navy aviation officials downplayed the report’s significance, saying the aircraft have functioned as expected. They are designed to operate in conditions up to 122 degrees, said Capt. Brian Block, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon. The problems outlined in the report occurred when the Shadow’s design parameters were exceeded, he said.

In Afghanistan’s Helmand province, peak summer runway temperatures can reach 135 degrees, according to the report, titled “Unmanned Aerial Systems Integrated Operations in Support of Regional Command Southwest.” RC-Southwest falls under the International Security Assistance Force and is led by Maj. Gen. John Toolan, who doubles as the head of II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward). Last summer, Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron 1, out of Twentynine Palms, Calif., was forced to ground the Shadow repeatedly due to excessive heat, the report states.

VMU-1 established a “hot weather schedule” during the summer because extreme temperatures could “cause the Shadow’s wings to swell and vent fuel,” the report states. When the Shadow was unusable, Marines employed the smaller ScanEagle for daytime reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition.

The report, which is unclassified and labeled “for official use only,” does not indicate whether VMU-1’s Marines were aware of the Shadow’s heat limitations before trying to operate it downrange last summer. The aircraft was designed and manufactured by AAI Corp., under an Army program. AAI deferred questions to the Marine Corps and Naval Air Systems Command, which provided Marine Corps Times with joint responses via Marine Corps headquarters.

The ScanEagle, meanwhile, showed no fuel-leak problems when used in extreme heat, according to the report. And despite reserving the Shadow for morning and evening sorties only, VMU-1 was able to “maintain coverage throughout the fly-day.”

Marines mitigated some heat-related problems by using solar shields and electrical fans, which they removed before flight, Block said. They also built a maintenance shelter to keep the Shadow and personnel out of the heat.

The report’s findings have no bearing on the Corps’ effort to arm the Shadow, Block said. A contract for the work was finalized in December and officials are pushing ahead with plans to conduct assessments downrange no later than July 2013.

Once fielded, the Shadow’s munitions will be among the lightest used, weighing less than 25 pounds. That’s expected to help maintain the aircraft’s range and endurance, officials told Marine Corps Times in October. By contrast, the Hellfire missiles carried by other unmanned aircraft, such as the Air Force’s larger MQ-9 Reaper, weigh about 100 pounds apiece. The Shadow’s bombs will drop with gravity and the UAV will “paint” the target with a laser for the bomb to hone in on.

Another option for the Corps could be to arm its smaller drones, such as the ScanEagle, said Peter Singer, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution who has written extensively about the military’s use of unmanned systems. Although there are no plans to do so, he said technology exists that would allow a 40mm grenade — which weighs about a half-pound — to be turned into a “little GPS-guided [Joint Direct Attack Munition].

Without their own armed unmanned aerial systems, Marines have depended on joint assets, and “competed with every other unit in [the war zone] to schedule armed UAS sorties,” according to the report. That drove Marine commanders to prioritize development of one.

Today, the Corps’ drones can identify targets, but a quick-reaction force or a traditional manned aircraft must be called in to attack them. In the time it takes a QRF or armed aircraft to arrive, the enemy can escape. During six months in 2009, for instance, there were 90 incidents in which the ability to immediately engage targets with the same unmanned aircraft that identified them would have “enabled effective engagement of enemy forces emplacing IEDs,” Block told Marine Corps Times in October.

Once armed Shadows are fielded, they will be able to strike targets at a moment’s notice. But the potential inability of an armed Shadow to operate during the day in the hottest summer months could leave the urgent-needs request partially unanswered. During those times, Marines would still have to compete with other services for armed aviation resources to strike targets quickly.

Despite this report, the Corps has no intention to deviate from Shadow procurement and fielding, Block said.

“The Marine Corps will continue to invest in the RQ-7 Shadow until it is replaced by a future Group 4 system,” he wrote, referring to a next-generation system scheduled to come online in 2016, according to the most recently available Marine Aviation Plan.