Marines look to UAS for expanded EW capabilities The United States Marine Corps (USMC) is currently evaluating a range of new UAS payload subsystems that will expand the role of unmanned vehicles in Marine Corps Electronic Warfare (EW) operations. An update on the USMC activities was provided during the recent Association of Old Crows (AOC) International Symposium and Convention, held in Reno, Nevada, from 19 to 23 October. According to Lieutenant Colonel Dean Ebert, currently assigned within the Department of Aviation at Headquarters Marine Corps, unmanned systems are a key element of the Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF), a task organisational capability at all echelons that is ‘really what defines us as a Corps.' He added that task organising at the appropriate size provides ‘adaptive scalability' to meet the objectives of the task force commander. UAS provide a key component of many MAGTF organisations. Lt Col Ebert explained that the Marine Corps flies three ‘Tiers' of systems, to support different echelons of MAGTF organisations: the Tier I RQ-11 Raven-B; Tier II Scan Eagle (contractor operated); and Tier III RQ-7B Shadow, ‘in partnership with the Army, which is fairly complex but it has worked out well.' ‘The unmanned systems truly are ‘access to the future' with respect to payloads on them or capability that we're going to exploit,' he said. ‘We intend to do so and we think it is going to be a good fit with the Marine Corps as we manoeuvre with UAS.' Current and future UAS EW payload programmes noted by Ebert included the ‘Iron Nail' Pioneer UAS Electronic Attack (EA) payload, the Software Reprogrammable Payload (SRP), ‘CORPORAL,' and Next Generation Jammer (NGJ). ‘We have already flown the Pioneer EA payload on the last Pioneer deployment into theatre,' he said. ‘But Pioneer is now gone [out of inventory], so we're looking to do something new with the Shadows.' Identifying CORPORAL as ‘the Collaborative On-line Reconnaissance Provider of Operational Responsive Attack Link,' he laughed, ‘It's quite a mouthful but that's what happens when you let Marines name things. The Navy named SRP - Software Reprogrammable Payload - and that's why it's a little easier.' ‘CORPORAL is a concept that is a JCTD [Joint Capability Technology Demonstration] that allows us to demonstrate some interesting and exciting technologies,' he said. ‘We're taking things that exist now and bringing them together so that we can demonstrate the ability to network and to deliver information and capability, including Electronic Attack, to that decision maker, wherever he is in the battlespace, effectively and efficiently, without a lot of overhead and without a lot of bureaucratic burden.' He added, ‘The idea is to leverage ‘plug and play' open architectures - scalable software reprogrammable constructs - to be able to deliver the right effects at the right time at the right place at the right person. And we want to push this down to individual Marines.' Lt Col Ebert acknowledged that the capability would create ‘no shortage of questions' about command and control issues and said that those questions were already being discussed among service planners. ‘Software Reprogrammable Payload is a hardware solution that offers certain opportunities as we move forward into the future,' he observed. ‘It's a small form factor payload that, at the end of the day, will be suitable for Shadow but could be suitable for other platforms as well.' Defined in software, SRP features government-owned IP and will allow expanded access to the RF spectrum through reprogramming into the specifically required comms node for a particular mission. Finally, he noted that the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ), which will be a capability for the Joint Strike Fighter, is also seen for possible integration into UAS ‘down the road.' By Scott R. Gourley, Reno, Nevada For more go to: UVOnline.com