Potential adversaries are outpacing the U.S. Navy in fielding new weapons and new weapon technologies. This is well documented. What is less apparent is that they also are outpacing the Navy’s ability to represent these emerging threats during the testing of new and upgraded weapon systems, as well as during fleet training evolutions. The combined effect is that the Navy is fielding new sensors, weapons, and integrated defense systems that have never been tested against live aerial targets that adequately represent many of the threats the fleet is, and will be, facing in future conflicts. As a result, the fleet may not know whether its weapon systems will have the capability to counter new adversary weapons.
A plan for developing advanced U.S. weapons that includes creating aerial target versions of those weapons could help bridge this gap.
The Acquisition Challenge
In general, the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) serial acquisition process—requirements development, budget formulation, then system design, development, and testing—does not begin for a target until the associated threat weapon system already has been fielded. Thus, an aerial target that credibly simulates the new threat may not be available for test and training environments for upward of 15 years after the threat is operational.
The Navy’s GQM-173 Multi-Stage Supersonic Target program, for example, was established to develop a target that emulated a class of antiship cruise missiles already in operational service.1 After multiple requirement studies, the Navy released a request for proposals in 2007. The contract was awarded in 2008, with the first flight test conducted in 2011. Following several test failures and a nearly $240 million investment, the program was terminated in 2015. The Navy still is looking for an affordable option to represent this threat class more than two decades after its introduction.2
To be fair, the Navy has continued to update its current aerial target inventory to be more threat representative, including developing the BQM-177 subsonic aerial target. However, the inventory used to represent antiship cruise missiles and aircraft today remains largely composed of Cold War–era vehicles (AQM-37, BQM-34, BQM-74) that can be updated only to a point. For example, the AQM-37 Jayhawk, currently the Navy’s only air-launched supersonic cruise missile target, first flew in 1961 and has been out of production for more than 15 years. It is being used for fleet training events such as Formidable Shield 19 in the North Sea and carrier strike group predeployment workups.
While the AQM-37 has been upgraded over the years to more closely represent evolving threats, there are fewer than 20 of these target drones remaining. They are forecast to be expended before the end of the decade. The Navy is actively developing program documentation to provide a replacement system, but using traditional acquisition models, it likely will take many years before it is ready to support the fleet. By the time it becomes operational in the mid-to-late 2020s, U.S. adversaries will have expanded their antiship missile capabilities beyond the design of even this newest target. Other new threat capabilities, such as hypersonic cruise missiles and fifth-generation fighter aircraft, have no target-equivalent programs in development today.
A New Development Approach
So how can the Navy get inside the adversary’s development cycle? It can start by following a dual-purpose design philosophy when developing advanced aerial weapons that simultaneously creates an aerial target version of that same weapon.
In other words, if the Navy develops a new hypersonic weapon, it would leverage the same technologies to develop a new hypersonic aerial target to represent systems our adversaries also are developing. To borrow terminology from the aviation training community, it would develop in parallel a trainer (-T) version of the weapon modified for the aerial target mission.
Linking a weapon system and its target version will provide synergistic cost, schedule, and performance benefits for both programs. These include a single development program; a combined test program and associated flight clearances; common logistic support structures, including training and shipboard certification; and increased procurement numbers to reduce unit costs. This strategy also helps to maintain operator proficiency through regular use of these weapons as targets; identify production lot and aging issues; gather a larger statistical database for reliability calculations; and provide an easier on-ramp for incremental improvements.
Using operational weapon systems as targets is not a new concept. It was the Navy’s original model for developing aerial targets in the 1940s and has been used extensively since. On 1 October 1946, the Secretary of the Navy established the U.S. Naval Air Missile Test Center and associated Pilotless Aircraft Unit (PAU) at Point Mugu, California.3 The PAU was to provide remote-controlled aerial targets developed from fighters, bombers, and seaplanes retiring from active service in the Pacific theater to test and evaluate the new Navy guided missiles and antiair gunnery systems being developed.
Over the years, many other fleet aircraft and weapons have been developed into aerial targets, including the F-86 Sabre, F-4 Phantom, SSM-N-8/9 Regulus I/II cruise missiles, RIM-8 Talos surface-to-air missile (MQM-8 Vandal), and AGM-84 Harpoon antiship cruise missile. Conversely, some aerial targets have been put into operational service as combat unmanned aerial vehicles. The BQM-34 Firebee aerial target, developed by the Ryan Aeronautical Company in the late 1950s, served during the Vietnam War as an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platform, chaff cloud dispenser, jamming platform, Maverick missile shooter, and laser-guided bomb dropper. It also was used during Operation Iraqi Freedom in the early 2000s to dispense chaff prior to carrier air wing ingress.
In 2016, the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD)—in conjunction with Third Fleet, Carrier Air Wing 11, and the Program Executive Office for Integrated Weapons Systems—conducted a demonstration using the AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) as an air-launched supersonic target. Although the HARM missile did not represent the full antiship cruise missile threat faced by the fleet today, it proved that existing and future weapons could be rapidly and affordably leveraged as aerial targets.
In another demonstration in March 2018, NAWCWD integrated and launched two modified AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles—one using a developmental highly loaded grain rocket motor—from a BQM-34 Firebee to demonstrate a potential low-cost solution to address the gap left by the cancellation of the GQM-173. The event also provided an opportunity to evaluate the developmental motor in a relevant airborne environment quicker and at much less cost and risk compared to launch from a manned F/A-18.
Following this success, NAWCWD is planning to launch excess AIM-7 Sparrow missiles from the Firebee to provide a more threat-representative supersonic sprint vehicle target and to qualify a new universal flight termination system prior to incorporating it into future weapons.
Much like the conversion of Hellcats, Sabres, and Phantoms to remotely controlled full-scale aerial targets (FSATs) in the past, the weapons-as-targets concept can be applied to development of the fifth-generation FSAT needed today. The Navy could leverage the extensive investments already made in the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet to convert it into a threat-representative target. Designing a remote-control system for the fly-by-wire Super Hornet is a small step and could be accomplished relatively quickly and inexpensively. By modifying early-lot Super Hornets approaching the end of their fatigue lives, the Navy could turn these veteran aircraft into fifth-generation targets and reallocate dollars that would have been programmed to procure targets to procure new aircraft for the fleet.
Using new weapons as targets may seem a costly way to represent a threat system; however, with the ever-increasing complexity and performance required in aerial targets today, the cost differential is reversing. It actually is less expensive to use weapons as targets, given the up-front engineering costs to develop and test a new target system and the life-cycle costs for separate weapons and targets logistic trails. For example, the GQM-163 Coyote supersonic target, which simulates a threat class of sea-skimming and high-diving supersonic cruise missiles, costs around $3.5–$4.5 million per target, depending on the configuration, and an additional $600,000–$800,000 to present for a test or fleet training event. This does not include funding to maintain the unique support and launch equipment, such as the 1950s-era Mk-7 launcher, required for GQM-163 operations.
A dual-purpose design approach already has been successfully demonstrated by a commercial spacecraft firm. Scaled Composites developed SpaceShipOne, the first nongovernmental manned spacecraft to reach space and the winner of the Ansari X Prize for repeated flights in a privately developed, reusable spacecraft.4 What is less well known is that at the same time the firm was developing SpaceShipOne, it developed the White Knight “mothership” with the same cockpit and flight controls. Every hour and dollar testing White Knight was an hour and dollar eliminated from the SpaceShipOne test program. By using this dual-purpose design philosophy, Scaled Composites was able to significantly decrease overall development time for both vehicles while simultaneously reducing combined program costs.
Navy ships and aircraft are at additional risk every time they go in harm’s way if their weapon systems have not been rigorously tested and trained against threat-representative targets. The current DoD acquisition model that develops aerial targets as standalone systems is not responsive enough to bridge the widening gap between emerging threat weapon systems and the Navy’s ability to assess its own weapon systems’ performance against them. A new aerial target acquisition model is needed—one that concurrently evolves new aerial targets as elements of new weapon programs. As the Navy develops its next fighter, antiship cruise missile, air-launched supersonic missile, and eventually hypersonic cruise missile, it would be wise to consider the benefits of developing an aerial target version alongside it.
1. See Missile Defense Project, “SS-N-27 Sizzler,” Missile Threat, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 15 June 2018; and “GQM-173A Multi-Stage Supersonic Target (MSST).”
2. Richard Scott, “NAVAIR Studies GQM-163 Chaff Kit to Replicate Multistage Supersonic Threats,” Jane’s, 12 February 2019.
3. Op-24/mad Serial 1873P24.
4. SpaceShipOne, Scaled Composites.