Fiscal 2011 Defense Budget Boosts Unmanned Systems

By: Brett Davis

The Obama Administration on 1 Feb. unveiled a $708 billion fiscal 2011 defense budget that calls for more unmanned aircraft flights over Iraq and Afghanistan and buys more UAS, while eliminating part of the U.S. Army's former Future Combat Systems.

"FY 2011 investment spending will continue the expanded use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in war zones. The request of $2.2 billion supports the plan to increase Predator-Class CAPs [Combat Air Patrols] from the current 37 to 65 by FY 2013," according to budget documents.

The budget includes $25.1 billion for shipbuilding, including for two Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), which make extensive use of unmanned systems as part of their mission packages for various functions, such as hunting mines or submarines.

It also includes $3.2 billion for Brigade Combat Team modernization, the new name for the Future Combat Systems program, which has been steadily scaling back in recent years. The BCT now includes iRobot's Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV) and Honeywell's Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) in its first increment. A later increment will include Lockheed Martin's Armed Robotic Vehicle-Light (ARV-L). Other variants of the ARV-L, and Northrop Grumman's Fire Scout unmanned helicopter, have now been dropped from the program.

UAS purchases in the budget include nearly $1.9 billion for MQ-9 Reapers for the U.S. Air Force and Sky Warrior UAS for the Army. That includes 12 Reapers and three Sky Warriors (also known as the Extended Range/Multipurpose (ERMP)) as part of Overseas Contingency Operation funding, and 36 Reapers and 26 ERMPs in the regular budget.

The budget calls for increasing the number of UAVs “so that we can increase the combat air patrols from 37 to 65,” Department of Defense Comptroller Robert F. Hale said at a Pentagon briefing. “We will max production of the Reaper – the most advanced version of the Predator. It’s at 24 in 2010; it will go to 36 in 2011, and then up to 48."

The budget also includes $1.5 billion for four RQ-4 Global Hawk aircraft, which includes $737 million for procurement and $781 million for continued research, development, test and evaluation, including the system development and demonstration for the U.S. Navy's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) variant.