The Unmanned Wingman Class Of Drones Could Truly Revolutionize Warfare In These 3 Ways

Drone warfare is finally starting to come of age. While drones like Predator and Reaper have been used against terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the early 2000s, truly advanced drones that are stealthy, relatively fast and able to perform a multitude of missions are only now starting to be developed. Among these drones is a class of drones colloquially known as the unmanned wingman or loyal wingman. These drones, as the name suggests, are meant to play pretty much the role that a manned fighter currently plays as the wingman of another manned fighter. The US Air Force defines a wingman as:

“The traditional military definition of a “Wingman” refers to the pattern in which fighter jets fly. There is always a lead aircraft and another which flies off the right wing of and behind the lead. This second pilot is called the “Wingman” because he or she primarily protects the lead by “watching his back”.”

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However, there are certain features this class has, that could make it truly useful not just in the role of an unmanned wingman, but also in many other roles, to not just truly transform air combat, but also give old, non stealthy fighters, a fighting chance in the battlefield of the future. This is because these drones are meant to be cheap enough to be expendable, and produced in large numbers, and have a modular nature, so that they could carry a variety of payloads for different roles.

In fact, the US Air Force program that aims to induct these drones is called Low Cost Attritable Strike Demonstrator (LCASD). Unmanned wingman drones being developed today include the Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie, the Boeing Airpower Teaming System (ATS), an as yet unnamed drone being developed together by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and Newspace Research and Technologies, and a plan by the UK government to procure unmanned wingman drones from one of three contenders. In this post I’ll describe three ways in which these drones could truly revolutionize warfare.

Drones As Decoys And Jammers

In the novel Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy (WARNING: spoilers ahead in this and next paragraph), an American carrier battle group (CBG) is in the Atlantic, with its two E2 Hawkeyes patrolling the skies for any signs of Soviet aircraft heading towards the CBG for an attack. Soon enough, they detected what appeared to be a huge formation of Soviet aircraft headed their way on the radar, and F-14s were sent to intercept them. The F-14s fired beyond visual range missiles to intercept them, expending most of their missiles in the process.

When they came nearer to the soviet formation, however, they realized to their dismay, that what they thought was a manned aircraft formation was actually just a formation of old Soviet anti ship cruise missiles that had been flying the flight profile of manned aircraft to deceive them. The F-14s rushed back to the CBG, with their depleted arsenals, knowing that the real attack would be coming from another direction soon. But by the time they arrived, the CBG has been struck by a volley of Raduga KSR-5 missiles fired by Soviet Tu-22M bombers from standoff distance, from another direction.

This fictional incident depicts a fundamental tenet of warfare- deception. And its as relevant in aerial warfare as it is on land and the sea. When the novel was written, there were no intelligent drones. But the idea behind using the old missiles as decoys was that an unmanned system could be used to divert enemy forces, without endangering the lives of personnel. Until now, due to lack of drones that are intelligent enough, air forces have used manned aircraft to deceive the enemy.

During the Balakot strike for example, IAF fighters from bases across India’s western sector kept flying in the direction of Pakistani border, giving an impression that they were about to carry out an air strike. This was to deceive the Pakistanis and distract their attention from the actual strike package, consisting of Mirage 2000s, that was headed towards Balakot.

In fact, a PAF Saab AWACS had likely detected the Mirages and PAF F-16s were scrambled to intercept them. To deal with this, IAF Jaguars took off from the base in Jodhpur right when the Mirages were approaching Balakot, to give an impression that they were about to bomb the Jaish e Mohmmad camp in Bahawalpur. Doing this, they successfully diverted PAF F-16s towards them, that were otherwise approaching the Balakot region.

The tactics of aerial deception go all the way back to World War 2, when right before the Normandy landings, allied aircraft sprinkled loads of metal chaff in sky above a region in the English channel, which wasn’t going to be used for the landings. As expected, the radar return of the metal chaff clouds was interpreted as a large aircraft formation by the Germans, and their attention and resources were diverted away from the direction from which the actual allied aircraft formation was approaching. Today’s radars might be intelligent enough to distinguish chaff from actual aircraft. But not intelligent enough to make out drones or missiles that are specifically programmed to look like manned aircraft.

While the cruise missiles used by Soviets as decoys in Red Storm Rising were essentially anti ship missiles refashioned as decoys, a small cruise missile called ADM-160B MALD (Minature Air Launched Decoy), is a missile developed right from scratch to be used as a decoy. MALD is small enough to be carried by a manned fighter, and can be programmed to emit the radar signatures of a large variety of aircraft. This missile is capable of massively increasing the fog of war for the enemy. Even a handful of MALDs launched can truly complicate the enemy’s gameplan on the battlefield, making it extremly difficult to know where the real attack is coming from.

Moreover, if the enemy fires surface to air missiles at the decoy missiles thinking them to be actual strike aircraft, the location of the SAM sites is given away, enabling attacks on them. The video beow shows MALD being used in combination with HARMs and JSOWs in a hypothetical SEAD mission. A longer range version of MALD has since been developed, and this new version also has a jammer variant. Swarms of decoy and jammer variants of MALD could be controlled by manned fighters from standoff distance, creating havoc.

There are two things, however, that MALD lacks- range and reusability. This is because it is essentially a missile, and a small one at that. All the feats that decoy and jamming missiles like MALD are capable of, however, could also be achieved by the drones like XQ-58 Valkyrie, that are reusable and yet cheap enough to be expendable, and with sufficient range and loitering time. Of course, it will still make sense for a manned aircraft to carry a MALD of its own to use it in certain scenarios. But an unmanned wingman with this capability will truly take these abilities to a whole new level.

And this not only makes missions more flexible, but also cheaper and safer. The IAF Jaguars that distracted PAF F-16s during the night of the attack on Balakot, might not need to be pressed into service in future, as that role of distraction could be carried out by cheap drones that would replicate the signatures of manned fighters. The decoy drones, would in fact, be able to perform the mission even better, as being unmanned and therefore not risking the life of a pilot, they could actually penetrade deep into enemy airspace, unlike the Jaguars, making the deception even more convincing to the enemy.

Moreover, not only is the cost of operating a drone far less than that of a manned fighter, but using them also saves the time for which the manned fighter has been in use, extending its lifespan and allowing it to be used in missions that are actually critical enough to warrant the use of manned fighters. The inexpensiveness of these drones could also allow them to be procured in larger numbers than manned fighters, giving more options to perform deception against the enemy in a conflict.

A role related to deception, that drones could also play, is that of jamming. In fact, a jamming variant of MALD, called MALD-J, has already been developed. This variant would be carried by EW platforms like F-18 Growler. Its easy to contemplate some of the drones in a swarm carrying jamming equipment in their internal bays while others acting as decoys, both of them acting in synergy to achieve the desired objective against the enemy, and making enemy airspace fer more permissible for manned aircraft.

Drones In Air to Air And Air To Ground Combat

Cope India 2004 was an exercise in which USAF F-15Cs paired off against IAF aircraft. The thing that’s still talked about regarding this exercise is a tactic IAF successfully employed against F-15s. Indian Su-30s used their powerful radars to play the role of mini AWACS for the much smaller Mig-21s. In other words, Su-30s spotted the F-15s with their radar, and cued the Mig-21s, which consequently had no need to turn on their own radars. This, coupled with the low RCS of Mig-21s and the Elta-8222 self-protection electronic warfare pod they were carrying, ensured that while the F-15s didn’t know the whereabouts of the Mig-21s, the Migs knew exactly where the eagles were.

Taking advantage of this situation, the Migs sneaked right up to the eagles, within the range of their short range air to air missiles, something that would have been disastrous for the F-15s in an actual conflict. This tactic isn’t uncommon. In fact, even in the USAF, there is talk of using F-15s in conjunction with F-35s in the same way. The only difference is that the F-15s would play the role of the Su-30s, using their powerful radar to detect enemy aircraft from a distance, and cueing F-35s flying ahead of them. The F-35s, with their super low RCS and radars turned off, would approach the unweary enemy aircraft undetected and shoot them down.

And it is in this tactic, that unmanned wingman drones could play a vital role in future. Essentially, flying ahead of manned fighters, the drones would play the same role that Mig-21 played in Cope India 2004, or that the F-35 is supposed to play with F-15. The manned fighters would fly behind, scanning the sky ahead with their radars, cueing the drones flying ahead about the location of enemy fighters.

The drones, with their low RCS and no radar, would launch air to air missiles on the enemy aircraft after sneaking up to them undetected. A drone somewhat related to unmanned wingman, that could also be used in this role is the “flying missile rail” being developed by DARPA. Although unlike the unmanned wingman drones currently being developed, this one isn’t stealthy.

The advantage of using drones in this role is of course, that it would be a far less risky endeavor compared to using manned fighters. The manned fighters with powerful radars could stay within friendly territory, cueing the unmanned wingmen operating ahead in enemy territory. The Indian Su-30 MKIs for example, are believed to routinely track aircraft landing and taking of from Lhasa, which is 200 km inside Chinese territory, while staying well within Indian airspace.

200 km is short enough distance to maintain a line of sight datalink between the manned fighter and the unmanned wingman. In this scenario, therefore, the S-30MKIs could easily direct stealthy drones carrying EW and air to air payloads near enemy airbases to engage the aircraft there, as they are landing or taking off. This is particularly useful, as aircraft are very vulnerable to attack during landing and taking off. During World War 2, in fact, allied fighters very often lurked around German airfields to engage enemy aircraft as they landed or took off.

There are, however, two possible limitations to this tactic. Firstly, the drones, unlike manned fighters like Mig-21 and F-35, are subsonic, which might somewhat limit their performance during air to air combat with manned enemy fighters. And secondly, if the enemy aircraft are stealthy, detecting them would not be easy with radar.

While its possible for onboard radar to intermittently detect stealth fighters from a distance, because RCS of stealth fighters varies depending on what headings they are flying on relative to the fighter trying to detect them, these are not weapons quality tracks. In other words, they are not good enough to guide a missile to the enemy aircraft.

However, these tracks may be good enough to know the general region where the stealthy enemy aircraft could be lurking, so that stealthy drones could be directed to that region. Once there, the drones could use onboard infrared sensors to locate and engage the enemy aircraft. In fact, the video below shows an unmanned wingman type drone with what appears to be an IR sensor in its nose.

This is, in fact, a tactic likely used by the IR variants of the 120 km range 9M96 missiles of the S-400 system, which I have described here. These missiles would be directed to the general region of an enemy stealth aircraft by the S-400’s long wavelength radar, and on reaching there, they would attempt to locate the aircraft using IR sensors. The drones would be even more capable of utilizing this tactic, if along with IR sensors they also carry electro-optical sensors with the ability to visually recognize enemy stealth aircraft using shape recognition software.

A more traditional combat role for these drones would be ground attack. A swarm of drones could loiter over an area of interest deep inside enemy territory, some of them in the swarm sending back video feed of the situation on the ground to the manned fighters in friendly air space, and others bombing the targets on the command of the manned fighters. Alternatively, with sufficient artificial intelligence, the drones carrying sensors could themselves identify ground targets worth engaging and cue the drones carrying air to ground munitions to attack them.

Miniaturization of munitions in recent years, leading to development of small, light weight munitions like Small Diameter Bomb (SDB), Spice 250 and Smart Anti Airfield Weapon (SAAW) would play a vital role in enabling these missions, as the internal bays of the drones would not be large enough to carry larger munitions in sufficient amounts. Plus, these small munitions can glide up to a distance of around 100 km, which would allow the drones to engage the ground targets from standoff distance.

A swarm of such drones could truly put an enemy airfield out of service. Some drones carrying passive sensors could identify both ground targets, including enemy aircraft on the tarmac, and aerial targets, like aircraft landing or taking off. The aircraft on tarmac, and other ground targets like fuel tanks and ammunition depots, could then be engaged by drones carrying air to ground munitions, while the aircraft approaching the airfield or taking off from it could be engaged by drones carrying air to air munitions.

Reconnaissance

The F-35 is seen as a true game changer not just because its stealth and sensor fusion make it highly survivable, but also because it is a truly capable reconnaissance platform, capable of soaking vast amounts of data through its infrared, electro-optical, radar, and RWR sensors. Data that can be fused and analysed to get a clear picture of the battle field. Small, stealthy drones like the unmanned wingmen can achieve the same feat, but in a much more distributed manner. Being far smaller in size, and modular in nature, these drones could carry different types of reconnaissance payloads in their internal bays.

They could carry passive receivers that would listen to enemy communications, receivers that would sniff out enemy radar emissions, IR sensors that would detect heat emissions of threats, and electro-optical sensors that would visually recognize targets. And all these sensors could detect both ground based and airborne threats. Being far cheaper and smaller in size, a large number of these drones carrying these different payloads could fill up the enemy airspace, giving a clear picture of the battlefield, without endangering the lives of any pilots. And being small in size, they would likely have even smaller RCS than a manned fifth generation fighter.

Conclusion

The unmanned wingmen drones have a slew of advantages over manned fighters- they are cheap enough to be expendable, have RCS even lower than fifth generation manned fighters, and have far lower maintenance requirements than manned fighters. In addition, their internal bays can carry a whole range of different payloads, like decoys, jammers, various active and passive sensors for reconnaissance, air to air and air to ground munitions.

This flexibility means that a swarm of these drones, orchestrated by manned fighters far behind them, and carrying different kinds of payloads, could not only make enemy airspace far more permissible for manned fighters, but also make it easier to achieve certain objectives inside enemy airspace without waiting for it to become more permissible for manned fighters.