U.K. Watchkeeper sets tone for UAV programs: Britain still deciding what technology to use for its unmanned aerial vehicles system.

Defense contractors are watching closely the United Kingdom's $778 million program to develop a family of unmanned aircraft for intelligence gathering missions. The Ministry of Defence has set an ambitious schedule and demanding requirements for its Watchkeeper program.

The British Ministry of Defence is still examining technology options for the program although it has formally announced the program's performance requirements, according to analysts.

The Watchkeeper will be an intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance system, designed to meet growing needs for collection of battlefield intelligence.

Watchkeeper UAVs will include advanced sensor packages, passing data into network-centric warfare systems connecting strike weapons and mobile ground stations. The MOD is looking at two types of vehicles as part of the program--a short-range tactical UAV (TUAV) to support brigades, and a medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) UAV to provide operational and strategic intelligence.

The acceleration of the program also coincided with a $5.51 billion increase in the U.K. defense budget for 2005-2006.

U.K. government officials have expressed support for the Watchkeeper program. "We have learned a great deal from the use of our Phoenix UAV in the Balkans, a system which was designed as an artillery spotter, but which quickly took on a far wider intelligence-gathering role," said British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon in a statement. "But advances in data-link technology now mean that modern UAVs offer greater potential for improving operational effectiveness."

Therefore, the MOD has decided to significantly shorten the schedule, particularly the systems integration assurance phase (SIAP) of the Watchkeeper program, to allow a "meaningful capability" to be available by 2005, instead of 2007 as initially planned.

The four contractor teams selected to compete for the SLAP are BAE Systems, Thales, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.

Putting Watchkeeper on the fist track may not necessarily work as planned, however, experts said. The fact that the MOD has accelerated the program does not necessarily mean that the capabilities will be ready by 2005, said Larry Dickerson, a UAV analyst with Forecast International DMS, a business intelligence firm.

"We'll have it our by 2005--that is sometimes a way to show support for the program," he said. "It is a vote of confidence. We are really pushing to see if we get something in our hands by 2005, either for testing or deployable [capabilities]."

One key issue that the MOD must resolve, he said, is how advanced Warchkeeper will be, compared to current UAV systems. The MOD "really has to nail down what they are going to do" with the Warchkeeper program. If the program is designed to use mature technology that already has been deployed, the accelerated schedule could be kept on track, Dickerson said. But if the capabilities required by the MOD demand significant new research and development of unproven technologies, such as vertical take-off, "they are going to run into problems," he said.

"The newer the system is, the more likely it is that you will have delays. Unanticipated problems are very common with UAV programs because [generally] they are new technologies."

He cautioned that the air vehicle is only a small portion of the system. "You may have problems with integration, problems meeting the size and power requirements," he said. As the UAVs become bigger and more requirements are added, that adds significantly more payload, which calls for more advanced propulsion technology. "It has got to be bigger to carry more. Then, it's got to have more power.

"The electronics make up the critical element of the system, [and are] also the most expensive portion," he said. "If you go up to a more enduring system then you see the payload growing pretty quickly, which can be the most expensive element of the entire system."

UAVs can fall into a common problem in weapon systems, called "mission creep," Dickerson said. A case in point is the U.S. Global Hawk, which was conceived in the early-1990s as a basic surveillance platform that would cost no more than $10 million each. Subsequently, however, the Global Hawk was upgraded with more advanced sensors, driving its cost to at least $45 million.

The company that ultimately wins the Watchkeeper program "is going to have a very challenging process ahead of them--multiple UAV systems, payloads, which now they [the MOD] want more quickly," said Dickerson. The program also has huge industrial implications, because it's one of the largest UAV programs out there today.

"It is a new challenge, because nobody has done it before. It is a big national program with multinational corporations competing for the contracts," said Dickerson.

Watchkeeper is part of a broad effort to modernize the British military, said Dickerson. The program incorporates all the UAV-related needs of the military and aims to provide a common solution to meet multiple requirements.

"In Europe, you can't afford to have the duplicative efforts like in the United States," where each service awards contracts to try out new technologies, Dickerson said. "European countries have not been able to do that since the 1950s."

Politics is not expected to play as large a role in the contractor selection process as it did in programs such as the Meteor air-to-air missile project, Dickerson said. "It is really not the case here," he said, because all the competitors are established companies with presence in the United Kingdom and in Europe. "There are no really big national issues here," he said. "It is not going to create the [political] fire storms that other contracts have."

The companies themselves have been fairly "closed mouthed" about their plans for the Watchkeeper program, said Dickerson. "The most important thing is getting everything to work together," said Dickerson.

"Once you build all the components and make them work together, that is where you are going to run into problems, [but] all the companies have experience" in complex systems integration work, he noted.

In Dickerson's opinion, all companies contending for the award are qualified, but nevertheless will find it difficult to meet the cost and schedule goals. If they run into unanticipated problems, he predicted, "that is going to run the British nuts, but I think they are all aware of that."

Industrial Teams

BAE Systems put together team Vigilant to compete for the Watchkeeper program. The company said it is committing significant private investment to the development of new technology.

Company officials said BAE plans to design a flexible and reconfigurable architecture that can be adapted to multiple sub-systems and payloads and can incorporate next-generation sensors and communications.

According to Steve Moreham, BAE System's UAV program manager, the team is proposing to build Watchkeeper with existing vehicles, which will keep the cost down. Vigilant team members include AAI Corporation, of Hunt Valley, Md., which makes the U.S. Army's Shadow 200 tactical UAV and General Atomics, of San Diego, Calif., the manufacturer of the U.S. Air Force's Predator UAV. AMS, a joint venture between BAE Systems and Finmeccanica, of Italy, and CDL Systems are also part of team Vigilant.

"We'll modify some of the elements to meet the U.K. requirement, because the U.S. Air Force, for example, does not have autonomy as a requirement for the Predator," said Moreham. The MOD specified that the vehicles must have automatic landing and take off, operate autonomously and conduct missions as long as 12 hours, he said.

The focus of the program is the sensors, not the vehicles, Moreham added. The company is investing in a UAV management system (UMS) which will provide the command control and data management. The UMS applications will include, in addition to command and control, automated launch and recovery, built in test and health monitoring, mission planning and multi-level image exploitation, according to a BAE statement.

The team lead by Thales is offering the Elbit Systems/Silver Arrow Hermes 180 TUAV and 450 MALE UAV as platform vehicles for the Watchkeeper.

The Thales team also includes QinetiQ, Aerosystems International, Thales Sensors, Thales Defence Information Systems and Thales Optronics.

For the upcoming SIAP phase, Thales set up a digital simulation, called the system integration laboratory, or SIL. SIL allows operating concepts for Watchkeeper to be modeled, facilitating system integration and risk reduction, said company officials.

Lockheed Martin also is promoting an open architecture for its Watchkeeper proposal. The company plans to take advantage of its experience in network-centric systems and complex systems integration, officials said.

"The technologies to this are here today. The problem is gluing them together," said Ron Christenson, the managing director of Lockheed Martin U.K. Integrated Systems. The key to winning this award, he said, is to have an adaptable architecture that can be molded to the changing requirements of the MOD and to new technologies as they mature.

Lockheed Martin claims to be the only team that is not proposing its own hardware for Watchkeeper and only will serve as an integrator of other companies' equipment. Company officials said this makes Lockheed better suited as an honest broker in deciding what technologies should be incorporated in Watchkeeper.

On Lockheed Martin's team are Insys, EADS, Meggitt, QinetiQ, Supacar, Aerosystems International and Systems Consultants Services. The UAVs proposed are the EADS Eagle, for broad reconnaissance missions, and the Meggitt Spectre 3, for close-in surveillance.

So far, Northrop Grumman appears to be the only competitor to offer a vertical rake off and landing. It is proposing the FireScout rotorcraft as the tactical UAV for the Watchkeeper, but said it has yet to decide what it will propose for MALE UAV.

The company will benefit from its expertise as the Global Hawk prime contractor and its work on the U.S. Navy's unmanned aircraft called Pegasus, said Robert Mitchell, Northrop Grumman's vice president for advanced systems development. The Northrop Grumman team includes Detica, Ultra Electronics, General Dynamics U.K. and STASYS.

The MOD was slated to announce this month its selection for the SIAP phase. No contracts had been awarded yet at press time. By 2003, the U.K. government will downselect to a single integrator for Watchkeeper.