How to protect NATO airspace with 400 Excalibur unmanned jets
Introduction
The Cold War ended in a plethora of applause from politicians eager to jump on the financial windfall now known as “the dividends of peace”. 25 years later the world came full circle but this time around it is a more dangerous and unpredictable place.
Be it a revanchist Russia pushing on the EU’s eastern borders, terror groups arising from failed states, the Assad regime in Syria or the geopolitical wrestling in the South China Sea, whether by design or by chance, the fact is that NATO and it’s Allies are hard pressed to do more. This is particularly so, as NATO and its Allies enjoy far less superiority than ever before; the technology advantage previously enjoyed by NATO Forces eroded and there has been a wider proliferation of basic stealth, ballistic and cruise missile technology and, more worryingly, the use of perfected Anti-Access (A2) and Area Denial (AD) ground based missile systems.
Traditional airborne systems are becoming less relevant in this new strategic environment of increased complexity and blurred lines between friend and foe. They also become less survivable in the face of very lethal air defences and advanced electronic countermeasures. Most of these A2/AD complexes are less than 5 years old, using the latest techniques. The majority of aircraft NATO has to counter them have an average age of 26 years in what has become the oldest Air Force ever.
ECA’s “Excalibur” Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAV/UCAS) is capable of reversing that trend and create the technological advantage needed to maintain NATO safe from threats over for future decades.
It constitutes a global network of supersonic UCAV’s, available 24/7, flying at the edge of space with unmatched performance to counter any threat; be it nuclear missiles, airborne, land, sea or space based threats, and to do so with a guaranteed capability to strike back deep into the aggressors heartland with impunity.
How to protect NATO & Allied airspace in a 5-phased approach
- Create a suitable platform
The Excalibur unmanned combat system was originally created to supplement the IOPFOR global training system. Soon however it became clear that the potential of the design went far beyond that of a mere training aid and the “Excalibur” concept was born.
The platform is not only highly supersonic with speeds of over Mach 2, it can fly close to the edge of space and has a manoeuvring capability far beyond the usual 9G limit, commonly found in fighter aircraft. During flight tests this summer in Sweden the platform is expected to break the world record for vertical climb speed as well as flight altitude.
Excalibur is the first aircraft to be based on the concept of “broad spectrum stealth” meaning that not only in the radar frequency bands but also in the visible light, infra-red, sound and communications bands, the aircraft is designed to be nigh undetectable.
The visual stealth features allow it to fly undetected by the human eye for far longer than existing aircraft and it can actually deny short-range air-to-air missile seekers from finding it in the background clutter. Also the Excalibur is the first airborne application of a true artificial intelligence computer, emulating the synapses of a mammalian brain, enabling the Excalibur to not only learn but process information at much higher speeds than currently possible.
The high G-limit of the Excalibur is thanks to the absence of a human pilot meaning the jet can literally out-turn an incoming missile once the engine ran dry thus making it much more survivable to an advanced air defence missile system such as the S-400, should it be capable of detecting an Excalibur.
For most other systems the aircraft is simply flying too fast and too high to be successfully engaged even if it could be detected.
Adversary aircraft could not readily fly at the Excalibur’s operating altitude to engage it and their missiles would lose too much energy climbing up there to be a threat and even at lower altitudes the Excalibur would have a good chance of ditching an incoming missile by performing unexpected high G manoeuvres.
In short, the Excalibur can fly undetected for long periods of time, in any kind of airspace even if a potential aggressor places A2/AD air defences and/or aircraft close to the border lines or in international waters being protected and deny them any weapons solution that would put the Excalibur out of action.
- Create an attrition buffer zone
The Excalibur does not replace manned aircraft but rather complements them for the more dangerous and tedious tasks in environments where manned aircraft would simply not survive. This is especially true over denied areas and on high altitude missions such as ballistic missile defence.
The idea in a purely defensive posture is to create an attrition zone at the border or over contested areas. This area could be a no-fly zone by international agreement or simply border surveillance in case of heightened tensions.
In case of attack however the aggressor would suffer an almost unacceptable loss of assets and crews should they try to penetrate the attrition zone, protected by Excalibur.
Manned aircraft can then be tasked with the second line of defence should any adversary assets make it through the attrition zone or could be tasked to intervene in a counter strike after the Excalibur has cleared up the very systems used by an adversary to deny them the airspace.
- Benefit from 21st Century Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and use a network of systems
Excalibur was designed from the outset as an autonomous UCAV using artificial intelligence for 90% of its flight profiles but have a human decision maker in the loop for any “lethal decisions”. The ground control centre benefits from a jam resistant quasi-random high bandwidth datalink (>10Gb/sec) with 2 operators seated behind traditional consoles for tracking, identifying and engaging slower targets of opportunity, defining the electronic order of battle (EOB) of the adversary or surveillance tasks such as detecting the readiness and positioning of enemy ballistic missile systems.
For the more kinetic parts such as close air to air combat, the Excalibur ground station is equipped with a 360 degree view full mission simulator cockpit, manned by an experienced pilot to take over the close range engagements. The simulator has the full views of the immediate surroundings of the Excalibur from the spherical IRST/TV image coming from the jet, but also the electronic signatures and target positions to increase situational awareness (SA). This makes the aircraft as good as a manned aircraft without being limited by the human body when getting into a dogfight.
More importantly however, the Excalibur never works alone, it is a “system of systems” allowing the learning process from the individual plane to be passed onto the entire network in real time, but also it allows the network to learn collectively, multiplying the computational power and decision-making speed far beyond anything seen to date.
For example, an Excalibur encounters a new type of radar threat and passes it along to the network for analysis. It is then decided by weighted voting and vulnerability analysis to let the radar engage the Excalibur to record the signal intelligence and countermeasure effectiveness.
Countermeasures are developed in real time by the network as the engaged Excalibur avoids the incoming threats. And even if one Excalibur is lost, the signal intelligence is not and the new radar is useless to the aggressor. What took a week and lost 300 aircraft to Israel during the 1973 war would take minutes on this kind of network.
- Day-2 guaranteed second strike capability
As has been established, ECA’s “Excalibur” network is up 24/7 over the territory it is tasked to protect, it is very hard to kill or spoof, it can all but deny the usefulness of nuclear missiles and because it uses a network of systems approach and artificial intelligence, it also has a far greater ability to detect and thwart enemy intentions, but there is more.
Excalibur is, not unlike nuclear submarines, a guaranteed retaliatory second-strike capability and one serious enough that the mere existence of it will weigh into a potential aggressor’s calculus.
With an advanced conformal sensor suite, a large internal weapons payload (>3,000lbs) and a networked capability to detect, classify, reach and engage targets as a group, ECA Program’s “Excalibur” is a hard match for any system.
But its unique capability to use stealth and go undetected into any kind of airspace, combined with the very low visual signature of the craft means that it is a perfect tool to “kick down the door”, should the need arise.
As a 5+ generation aircraft system it can serve as a retaliatory tool to force an aggressor to a political settlement, or it can open the area wide open to follow-on strikes from traditional strike aircraft should such political solutions not be sincere or followed through.
ECA Program Group Plc is a UK based company and as such it’s export licenses are granted under current MoD and Foreign Office guidelines. It is also noteworthy that the United Kingdom is signatory to both the MTCR Agreement and the Wassenaar Arrangement.
If it is a fact that several other signatories take, and have taken, these engagements rather lightly or with a fair dose of “political convenience”, the United Kingdom has always taken these responsibilities very seriously and export permits of so-called “Class-1” UAV’s are strictly controlled to say the least.
It is however possible, given the right oversight and governmental authority, to allow the use of “Excalibur” inside of NATO and some very close allies on a power by the hour basis which can best be defined as “Sovereignty as a Service”.
Under this model, the airspace can be protected on a day to day basis with a variety of benign sovereignty missions; escorting unknown aircraft through the airspace, monitoring no fly zones or even cataloguing military build ups on contested islands and waterways.
As such the Excalibur is contracted on a multi-national level making it more economical than operating manned fighters and allowing them to take a back-up function for when things heat up under the “attrition zone” doctrine.
During times of increased tension, command over the system is taken over by national authorities to authorise the use of weapons. Under this concept of operations, an Excalibur network of merely 400 aircraft can protect all of NATO’s frontiers and large swaths of “areas of strategic interest”, such as the Middle East or the South China Sea.
This allows for billions of dollars in savings on the use of manned aircraft fleets and effectively fixes the fleet reduction and ageing problem that NATO forces have suffered since the “dividends of peace” era.
Conclusion
Whilst in the West has taken for granted the period of “long peace”, its adversaries have used this period of lower vigilance to present us with a whole new catalogue of threats as well as large scale destabilising manoeuvres including novel concepts such as hybrid warfare, using human refugee streams as a weapon or masking true intentions by encroaching on new land. Actions that have proven very effective, as the West prefers to adopt an appeasement policy for the lack of political will to act in a meaningful way.
More than a purely military tool, ECA’s Excalibur Unmanned Combat Air System is a political tool, reducing the threat posed by nuclear ballistic missiles, and increasing the cost for a potential aggressor to behave like a rogue nation, or guaranteeing the prospect of a crippling secondary counter-strike.
The use of the system entices our adversaries to come to the table as honest partners with whom one can have a constructive dialogue to secure the future for all. And, should all else fail, Excalibur assists NATO and Allied countries to resist an attack without heavy loss of civilian life, opening the path for the legacy bulk of the force structure to engage in successful Effects Based Operations (EBO).
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-protect-nato-airspace-400-excalibur-unmanned-jets-ten-cate/
