If Navy leaders' hopes are realized, the new UAV will be worth the wait.
pilotonline.com
It's supposed to be capable of identifying the same ground targets from twice the
distance that the Pioneer can. And, unlike the Pioneer, it will be able to train a
laser that can be used by a piloted attack jet to guide a bomb to a target.
Perhaps most importantly, the new UAVs will be able to vertically take off and
land -- allowing them to be assigned not just to larger-deck amphibs such as the
Ponce, but also to cruisers and destroyers.
By contrast, the Pioneer must be rocket-propelled from a ship's flight deck, then
caught in a net at up to 75 mph on its return.
That launch-recovery sequence is so fraught with problems that it wasn't until last
year, 12 years after the UAVs joined the fleet, that the Navy completed a
deployment without at least one Pioneer mishap. Cost per lost aircraft:
$750,000.
The Pioneer has had some proud moments. Flying from battleships in the Persian
Gulf War in 1991, its video feeds helped Navy commanders direct fire from the
dreadnoughts' 16-inch guns. It was a low-flying Pioneer that a group of
handkerchief-waving Iraqis famously surrendered to during that war, in which
UAVs helped direct shelling.
In December, Pioneers from a Webster-based detachment flew 330 hours in the
Persian Gulf. They helped enforce the United Nations no-fly zone over southern
Iraq and trained their cameras on merchant ships boarded by Navy crews
policing a maritime embargo.
In February, still another detachment took its Pioneers to California and,
snooping from high above, helped state and federal law enforcers bust hundreds
of drug runners along the Mexican border.
But the Kosovo operation may have proved the Pioneer's time is past. In about
80 hours of flying the vehicles, the Ponce detachment lost four of the UAVs,
three of them to suspected Yugoslav anti-aircraft fire.
The Army's Hunter and Air Force's Predator suffered similar losses, but over
many more flight hours. |
