Shown is a Kratos rendering of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Off-Board Sensing Station low-cost attritable unmanned aircraft system. Image courtesy of Kratos.
When the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) solicited proposals to demonstrate a low-cost attritable unmanned aircraft system (UAS) back in February, Kratos had already laid some of the groundwork for its competitive bid through earlier work on similar vehicles, much of it funded by the company.
The (OBSS) is designed for a lifetime measured in years rather than decades, with no depot maintenance and limited field maintenance, according to the AFRL solicitation. The demonstration vehicle will incorporate “scalable and responsive” manufacturing techniques, with future variants to be built from a common, government-owned architecture based on emerging requirements.
In this Q&A, Steve Fendley, president of Kratos’ Unmanned Systems Div., sheds a bit of light on the secretive program.
Breaking Defense: Why would you build an attritable aircraft? What’s the value of that?
Fendley: The category/class called ‘attritable aircraft’ really refers to an affordability objective solution to a UAV problem/need without an expectation for the aircraft to be in service forever. This class seeks an optimization of capability versus cost and life. It’s certainly not the intent to use these assets once and throw them away, but they are also not intended to remain in service for 100 years like the B-52 for example.
To be suitable for this mission and to meet this need, attritables are made with design and manufacturing tradeoffs that ideally maximize capability in each performance/functional area and throughout the aircraft’s lifetime right up to the knee in the curve where the price would increase substantially versus performance.
Attritable aircraft provide a mass advantage in conflict, which is commonly assessed as the current need to be able to meet near-peer adversary threats. They solve the mass equation because we can afford to acquire and deploy large numbers of attritables. The DoD has identified two cost ranges for attritables: $2 million to $20 million per copy and $2 million to $10 million per copy. Kratos’ family of attritable aircraft – the XQ-58A Valkyrie, the UTAP-22 Mako, the Air Wolf, several classified systems, and now, our proposed solution to OBSS – fit at the very low cost end of those ranges and provide a high-performance-versus-cost-system solution that the user can afford to potentially lose at some non-zero rate.
The Kratos lineup of unmanned tactical systems and drones. Photo courtesy of Kratos.
Breaking Defense: So these attritable UAS would carry a basic payload like an electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor—something that’s not too valuable if it’s lost?
Fendley: In general, that’s correct. However, there’s certainly the possibility of having an attritable aircraft carry an exquisite sensor. Kratos’ family of attritable aircraft are absolutely suited to perform such a mission. For example, we could integrate a $5 million-$10 million sensor on one of our systems. But that specific tail number, in all likelihood, would not be performing an attritable mission, even though technically the expensive sensor would be on an attritable aircraft. You might have 10 attritables flying together with various missions and a range of total values across the 10 systems. There is definitely a lot of flexibility in how you could configure, operate, and task them.
Let me describe attritables a little more and the way I think the government sees the class. With expendable aircraft, the DoD assumes every launch is a one-way trip and that asset is not coming back. For attritables – I’ll give you very rough numbers here – let’s say we launched 10 aircraft; we hope to get all 10 back. But if we get 7 out of the 10 back and our mission was successful, the Pentagon is still thrilled because the cost of the losses were minimal, and with the mission objective being successful and the cost being within the threshold, it’s a success. The idea is to have a similar combat or mission effect at a much lower cost and a lower risk than it would be for more conventional or legacy systems.
The other thing about attritables that’s different from legacy UAS, outfitted with their exquisite sensors, is distributed lethality in the case of weapons and distributed sensing in the case of sensor missions. Maybe you have a very comprehensive sensor capability because you have 10 of these attritable aircraft carrying non-exquisite EO/IR systems, for example. You’re fusing the data you get from those aircraft remotely, and the picture you get is very precise. Now let’s say that three of those aircraft get shot down; you still have a very high-quality picture and good intelligence because you have a seven-sensor baseline instead of just one very expensive sensor. The distributed method helps reduce cost and increase mission effectiveness and survivability.
Breaking Defense: Is OBSS geared toward adversaries with advanced air defenses?
Fendley: I’ll answer more generally for Kratos’ family of attritables. If you look at the DoD UAS roadmap from a decade or so ago, it shows what’s in the U.S. inventory. There were a bunch of unmanned aircraft, and they were either high-flyers or very long-endurance systems that are not very maneuverable, not very fast, and certainly not survivable in an area where the U.S. does not have air dominance.
So Kratos focused on the area of the flight envelope where there weren’t any unmanned aircraft but where mission needs still existed. Think high-subsonic performance, high-G performance, and as a result, very advanced maneuverability. All of those things translate very well to survivability and equate to an unmanned system that can operate in a contested environment and be substantially more survivable and harder to detect. That’s the sweet spot for these, and Kratos’ tactical UAS are geared to meet these objectives and toward adversaries with advanced air defenses.
Breaking Defense: Can you describe an OBSS mission scenario?
Fendley: Speaking of attritable aircraft generally, not necessarily OBSS, we’re talking about sensor extension and range extension. Let’s say a manned system has particular sensors, such as EO/IR, and the goal is to increase standoff range against a particular threat.
A handful of attritable aircraft could fly in a teaming formation with a manned aircraft. As the mission progresses, the pilot in the manned aircraft would say, ‘OK, this is as far as I’m going toward the threat because we’re getting close to a contested environment or risk area for me.’ The unmanned aircraft would then be tasked with continuing into the contested environment/risk area and collecting and sharing data to better inform the mission and the warfighter. This methodology allows our manned aircraft systems to become much more effective with the increased intelligence achieved through the ‘offboard’ sensors at substantially reduced risk to the manned assets thanks to a greater stand-off position.
Breaking Defense: Would this capability fit into the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architecture?
Fendley: It would be a great solution for being a part of and taking advantage of the JADC2 architecture. Is that their plan? I don’t know. But is that a logical conclusion? Yes. And I believe it would be incredibly effective and would put that intelligence information on that network.
Breaking Defense: Is Kratos’ Ghost Works advanced development division involved with this?
Fendley: I can tell you that Ghost Works is intimately involved in this.
Breaking Defense: Can you broadly describe Kratos’ UAS capabilities?
Fendley: Kratos has at least 11 different jet-powered UAS systems today–either in rate production or as prototypes that are either expendable or attritable. All have some level of capability to carry sensor systems, subsystems, and communication systems, while some have the capability to carry and operate weapons.
Potentially, we could be responsive to any unmanned aircraft program. However, in general, our sweet spot is something that’s in the high-subsonic speed range, high-maneuverability G range, and high survivability with respect to a contested environment. We have absolutely become experts at developing and producing high-performance subsonic, affordable, jet, unmanned aircraft that include a range of autonomy capability.
Breaking Defense: My understanding is Kratos often begins developing UAS systems on its own dime in response to an anticipated government requirement. Was that the case with OBSS?
Fendley: That’s definitely true. With OBSS, the DoD put out a solicitation, and we replied. However, in many other cases, we have used information that we’ve learned, or information the DoD is sharing such as the DoD UAS roadmap, to forecast a need that the military has or will have, and we spend our own money to start the design and development of a system. In many cases, we go all the way through building one or a number of aircraft to demonstrate to the government and say, ‘we think we have a capability here that may line up with a need even though you might not have released a public requirement yet.’
We’re a 3,000-employee, mid-tier defense company, so for us to do that – to sell systems directly to the government/DoD – is very unusual. In the Unmanned Systems Division, we’re primarily selling systems: an unmanned airplane, the ground station you need to operate it, and the support equipment to prepare it and maintain it between flights. We’re offering a comprehensive solution, and that’s unique for a non-tier-1 defense contractor.
Affordability is what is most essential to enable us to compete with the other primes. As a company, speed, agility, and affordability are our discriminators. Because of our size, selling a number of $1 million or $3 million aircraft a year is a solid business model for us, so we are adequately incentivized even at these price points. That is unlikely to be the case for traditional primes. Just think about it from the simple financials; they are likely disincentivized to offer system solutions in this price range.
Even though most times there ends up being a competition for us to sell systems, we’re much better positioned to be affordable and to have an attractive schedule because we’ve done the preponderance of the work ahead of time. The takeaway here as it relates specifically to OBSS would be that all of the work we’ve done on our other systems, subsystems, and technology development, we believe, will be helpful in a program like OBSS in providing some technology, cost, and schedule advantage.
