Drones of the Navy SEALs

December 16, 2012 Guest Author Leave a comment

The mystique of Navy SEALs has been heavily celebrated in the media and films due to recent real-world exploits. Yet Naval Special Warfare (NSW) Sailors have been heavily engaged in combat operations for more than 11 consecutive years. Warfare is still a decidedly human endeavor, and America’s naval special warriors are quick to embrace the truth that “humans are more important than hardware.” Nevertheless, today’s SEALs, Special Warfare Combat Crewmen, and other supporting personnel in the NSW community have benefited greatly from technology, which increasingly includes unmanned systems.

Two primary realizations within the NSW community drove the rapid introduction of UAVs for combat operations in Southwest and Central Asia. The first realization was that even the best shooters in the world are ineffective if they are unable to locate their targets. Simply, UAVs are a force multiplier for SEALs and enable an exponential increase in their ability to find, fix, and finish targets. Secondly, as more and more small UAVs were added to the force, NSW began to understand that as valuable as these unmanned systems were, the skills required to operate and maintain them were a distraction for highly trained shooters. This epiphany led to the creation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Troops at Naval Special Warfare Support Activity (SUPACT) One in Coronado, California, and SUPACT Two at what is now Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, Virginia. According to Naval Special Warfare Command, each UAS Troop totals 35 personnel among three detachments of UAS operators, a group of instructors, and military and civilian maintenance technicians.

For some additional first-person historical perspective on the evolution of unmanned air systems (UAS) in NSW, former Navy SEAL UAS expert and current lighter-than-air unmanned systems entrepreneur John Surmount discusses the origins of unmanned air systems in Naval Special Warfare in Operation Enduring Freedom in this podcast. Since those early days, the breadth and depth of unmanned systems used by Naval Special Warfare Operators has expanded tremendously.

The exact tactics, techniques, and procedures for UAS use with NSW are a closely guarded secret (as well they should be), but in general, SEALs use drones to support the four core missions of NSW:

Direct Action (DA) – offensive missions to capture/kill enemy targets
Special Reconaissance (SR) – surveillance and monitoring of enemy activity and the littoral environment including beaches and ports
Counter-terrorism (CT) – conducting DA against terrorist networks
Foreign Internal Defense (FID) – assisting foreign military partners in developing their own special operations capacity.

UAVs are especially critical for finding and fixing the exact location of an enemy in DA and CT. They also support, and in some cases replace, the eyes of operators in SR missions. On a micro-scale, a demonstration the utility of UAVs can be seen in the film “Act of Valor” where a Raven UAV – launched by actual operators from Special Boat Team 22 – provides ISR over-watch of SEAL operators on a mission. A more-capable, marinized UAV, the Puma AE, is also part of NSW’s inventory.

The beauty of these rucksack-portable systems is that they can provide organic support to a platoon or smaller-size group of SEALs. The primary drawback is limited endurance. Enter the Small Tactical UAS (STUAS). NSW has embraced the ScanEagle for missions where long endurance ISR is a requirement. NSW ScanEagles can be sea-launched from vessels as small as a MK V Special Operations Craft or based ashore at expeditionary sites. Another example of the value of UAVs in the over-watch role was demonstrated in April 2009, when a ScanEagle provided a real time feed to assist SEALs in rescuing the Maersk Alabama’s Captain Richard Phillips from his pirate captors.

More recently, NSW has benefited from the Navy’s introduction of the shipboard vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) Fire Scout. Requirements for the next-generation VTOL UAS, the Fire-X MQ-8C, are also driven by special operations forces. Future developments in Navy UAS integration for NSW will undoubtedly include armed tactical UAVs providing fire support to operators on the ground and sea.

The same concept of ISR support and armed over-watch applies to more complex operations with larger UAVs. Land-based Air Force Predator and Reapers support NSW missions in Afghanistan and other areas. A low-signature RQ-170 drone reportedly assisted the SEALs who conducted the raid to kill Usama bin Laden in May 2011. NSW is also slowly progressing in the implementation of unmanned undersea vehicles (UUV). These systems are used for missions such as hydrographic reconnaissance reducing the risk to operators and letting them focus on other core missions. Much as the Navy’s Explosive Ordnance community has embraced autonomous underwater vehicles to help them hunt and neutralize mines, SEALs will eventually find themselves reliant on robots to survey beach landing sites.

Along with other underwater assets such as swimmer delivery vehicles, UUVs fall under the auspices of Naval Special Warfare Group Three (NSWG-3). In 2010, Naval Special Warfare Command ordered some Iver2 autonomous undersea vehicles for experimentation. NSW has also purchased 18 Semi-autonomous Hydrographic Reconnaissance Vehicles (SAHRV) outfitted with side-scan sonar and an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. SAHRV is an adaptation of the REMUS 100. On the USV side, earlier this year, Naval Sea Systems Command’s Naval Special Warfare Program Office sponsored a test of a Protector USV armed with Spike missiles. The application of such a capability in support of NSW missions is unclear.

The combination of the world’s most proficient naval special operators enhanced by modern technology will continue to produce powerful strategic effects through tactical actions.

This article was re-posted by permission from, and appeared in its original form at NavalDrones.com.

Africa, Strategic Outlook

Piracy in West Africa: Preventing a Somalization of the Gulf of Guinea, Pt. 1

December 12, 2012 Guest Author 7 Comments

Gulf of Guinea Pirate Attacks in 2012. Source: IMB

On August 4, 2012, pirates attacked an oil barge, killing two local security personnel and kidnapping four foreign workers. Two weeks later, pirates hijacked and held for five days a British-managed oil tanker as they unloaded its cargo, a style of attack that repeated the following fortnight on a much larger Greek owned tanker.

While such events were routine of late off the coast of Somalia, these attacks occurred on the other side of the continent, in the West African territorial waters of Nigeria and Togo. Piracy has now declined in the Indian Ocean—a trend attributed to international naval patrols, the increased use of armed guards aboard ships, and political developments in Somalia—but in the Gulf of Guinea it is on the rise. The region reported 47 incidents of piracy (it is estimated that up to 60% of attacks go unreported) to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 2010, a number which rose to 61 in 2011 and will likely be surpassed by 2012 figures.

Highlighting this growing danger, Lloyd’s Market Association, a London-based group of insurer representatives, recently added the Gulf of Guinea to its “Hull War, Strikes, Terrorism and Related Perils Listed Areas,” placing the waters of Nigeria and Benin in the same category as those of Somalia and Iraq. Seeking to examine the intricacies of this oft-overlooked security threat, this article intends to do three things in three posts: chart the evolution of West African piracy, assess whether or not a “Somalization” is occurring, and evaluate regional and international plans to combat the mounting crisis.

From Fishermen to “Freedom Fighters”

MEND Pirates/Militants. Likes: Walks along the beach; oil.

The problem of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea extends from Senegal in the north to Angola in the south, and affects over a dozen countries in between. The historical epicenter is Nigeria, where pirates have parasitically fed off the country’s oil boom since the 1970s. During Nigeria’s first iteration of piracy, the crime began as simple economic opportunism. Ransacking docked ships was common, while bolder pirates—equipped with little more than canoes and machetes—ventured slightly further from port in attempts to board and rob slow-moving vessels. The theft of crude oil from refueling or anchored ships, referred to as “bunkering,” also brought a tidy profit through resale on a black market that spans the continent.

In the early 2000s, a drastic change occurred as piracy, while remaining an economic-minded crime, became infused with politics. The basic grievance was that the federal government in Abuja had taken too great a share of Nigeria’s petroleum wealth, while distributing little back to the oil-soaked communities of the Niger Delta. A plethora of militant groups emerged to “reddress” the oil issue during this period, the most significant of which was the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

Seen by its practitioners as an effective tool for the “redistribution” of oil wealth, pirate attacks increased dramatically at the turn of the century. From 2000 to 2005, Nigeria’s waters were more pirate-prone than those of Somalia. By 2006 an estimated $1.5 billion in annual revenues for the country was lost through a combination of piracy, bunkering, and militant attacks on oil infrastructure.¹

Politically motivated attacks on offshore platforms, the kidnapping of oil workers, and the theft of crude oil has challenged the traditional definition of piracy, as the crime is only recognized under international law if it is committed “for private ends.” Certain incidents are clearly socio-political in nature. In 2000, for example, militants stormed a Royal Dutch Shell oil storage platform, taking 165 employees hostage before releasing them in exchange for talks with the government.²

Piracy expert Martin Murphy concludes that in West Africa, the “line between the political and the criminal is hard to draw.”³ In Somalia, pioneering pirates first made claims of “restitution” for illegal foreign fishing and toxic dumping before expanding into indiscriminate hijacking and hostage taking, driven solely by profits. Similarly in the Gulf of Guinea, bunkering began as a form of economic protest but has grown into a multi-million dollar industry as oil tankers’ valuable cargos are robbed and resold.

Go Forth and Multiply

Not at all a tempting target... — Not at all a tempting target…

Attacks off the coast of Nigeria have ebbed and flowed in recent years. Intensified naval patrols and a 2009 government amnesty offered to Delta militants resulted in a decline in reported attacks – from a high of 42 in 2007 to 10 in 2011.⁴ Nigerian piracy has increased in 2012, however, with 23 incidents already reported in the first three quarters.

According to piracy expert J. Peter Pham, the gangs now operating across the Gulf of Guinea are “composed mainly of, and certainly led by, Nigerians, with perhaps a smattering of other nationalities.” They have shifted their operations into neighbouring states as the authorities there lack the capacity to survey and patrol their own waters.

Piracy is but one symptom of the lack of maritime order in the region, as endemic drug smuggling; human and weapons trafficking; and attacks against oil infrastructure have threatened to turn West Africa’s seaways into a criminal super-highway. These manifestations of maritime insecurity are linked, speculates Bronwyn Bruton, as international criminal syndicates previously involved in weapons and drug trafficking “[jump] on the pirate ship” as a new source of revenue. This claim was reiterated by Abdel Fatua Musah, Director of Political Affairs for the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), who reported to the UN Security Council that piracy has dovetailed into other forms of transnational organized crime.

Piracy and theft are believed to cost Nigeria 7% of its annual oil revenues. Benin’s port of Cotonou—taxes from which account for 40% of the country’s GDP—is witnessing a reported 70% decline in shipping activity due to piracy.⁵ In total, it is estimated that piracy costs the littoral states of the Gulf of Guinea an annual $2 billion in stolen cargo, rising insurance premiums, and other security costs. As the menace expands, the export of metals, cocoa, and agriculture products—vital to both local development and world markets—will also come under threat.

James Bridger is a Maritime Security Consultant and piracy specialist at Delex Systems Inc. He can be reached at jbridger@delex.com. This article is a modified form of James’ work with the Atlantic Council of Canada’s Maritime Nation Program publication “From Sea to Sea: The Search for Maritime Security“.

1. Martin Murphy, Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money: Piracy and Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World, London: Hurst and Company, 2009, pg. 117

2. Ibid, pg. 119

3. Ibid, pg. 122

4. International Maritime Bureau, “Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships: Report for 2011,” International Chamber of Commerce, January 2012.

5. “An Emerging Threat? Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea”.

Drones, Future Tech

On the Wings of the Sun? Harnessing Solar Power for Aviation

December 10, 2012 Guest Author Leave a comment

A few months back we had a guest post from NavalDrones on the site discussing power needs for drones, focusing on the advantages of batteries compared to today’s combustion engines. Engines are noisy, limiting drones’ stealthiness, and both engines and batteries require refueling/recharging. Thus, lengthy, days-long on-station operations aren’t in the cards for today’s drones. (For example, the Global Hawk can fly continuously for about 28 hours.) A balloon or dirigible could stay aloft for longer periods, but at the expense of maneuverability and speed. For reasons like these, harvesting solar power during flight has captured the attention of many aerospace engineers.

One challenge terrestrial solar-powered vehicles face is the variability of cloud cover. In contrast with its grounded brethren, solar aircraft can often negate a cloudy day by just climbing to a sufficient altitude. However, night is, of course, still an obstacle to long-term flight (or short-term missions not in the daytime).

Nevertheless, with the aid of batteries, today’s solar drones and UAVs can fly non-stop for weeks. The British-US aerospace and defense company QinetiQ developed the drone Zephyr, which stayed aloft for 14 days in July 2010 (h/t to Solar Impulse). Zephyr is not small (12-m [39-ft] wingspan), as one can see in the following video, but it is light—only 27 kg, or ~60 lbs, hence the hand-launch. It reached an altitude of 21.6 km (13.4 mi) on that first flight, boosting its observational capabilities.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejXaAwsIDoI&w=560&h=315]

Meanwhile, the goals of the Solar Impulse team might be even more audacious: a solar-powered flight around the world in 2015— with a pilot. While it’s perhaps not the most agile, the HB-SIA has already demonstrated 24-hr flight in the past year (with a battery system) from Switzerland to Morocco. And the team has strong backing; it was launched by Bertrand Piccard, who made his name in aviation by circumnavigating the world in the Breitling Orbiter balloon in 1999. Industrial partners include Solvay, Décision, and Bayer MaterialScience, who increased their funding for the project in October [h/t to Flightglobal]. In contrast to Zephyr, HB-SIA’s mass is 1600 kg (3500 lb), about as much as a car, and its 63-m (208-ft) wingspan is about 60% longer than Global Hawk’s – necessary to fit enough solar cells to lift that mass.

So what’s next for solar aircraft? A higher-density storage system than batteries would help by extending flight time. NASA tested a series of solar UAVs in the early ’00s, including Helios, which included an “experimental fuel cell system” that used solar power to regenerate its fuel, storing more energy per pound than batteries. Unfortunately, a crash in 2003 destroyed Helios, but a fuel-cell system remains a possible avenue of advancement. Surface-based lasers can also offer additional illumination for a power boost (also covered in Naval Drones’ post).

Increasing the efficiency of solar cells is another route. Aircraft using solar cells require large wings whose size and shape are driven in part by demands for enough surface area to power the aircraft. These designs limit maneuverability and high-performance (i.e. high-power-demand) attributes like sudden acceleration and changes in direction. Unfortunately, physics principles constrain just how much efficiency can increase. Solar Impulse uses cells with an efficiency of 22.7% — higher than most commercial modules in solar farms. But using only one kind of material in the cell to absorb light means it can harvest only part of the sun’s light, at maximum about 33% (something called the Shockley-Quiesser limit).

Multi-junction cells can capture more slices of the solar spectrum, but in practice their complex assembly limits them to two or three absorber materials. So far they are mostly used in spaceflight, where low weight is a bigger driver than low cost. Still, according to the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab, the record triple-junction cell (without concentrators, which are another topic) has 35.8% efficiency. So assuming for the sake of estimation that these triple-junction cells weigh about the same per unit surface area (not true at present, according to Solar Impulse), they could reduce wing area by about 37%. Or, depending on the requirements, they could produce 58% more power.

And power is the big difference between a solar airplane like HB-SIA and a fuel-burner like Global Hawk. HB-SIA’s electric engines produce a maximum of 30 kW (40 hp), whereas Global Hawk’s engine produces at peak 7600 lbs of thrust at a top speed of 357 mph, which works out to 5.4 MW (7200 hp). In part we could say that HB-SIA is more efficient, so it doesn’t need as much power, but on the other hand, Global Hawk can carry a 1360-kg (3000-lb) payload, whereas HB-SIA can carry… one human.

Doing the math shows the upper limit of improving power capture. The sun provides, at midday, 1.3 hp per square meter (of land surface). This handy figure gives you an idea of the maximum solar power wings of a given size could produce (with magical 100% efficient cells). Thus, performance improvements may come from vehicle lightweighting, rather than ratcheting up solar cell efficiency. For example, batteries make up one-quarter the total mass of HB-SIA (400 kg, or 800 lb). And while modern aircraft bodies are increasingly made of carbon fiber (instead of aluminum), companies such as Nanocomp and TE Connectivity are also beginning to manufacture data and power cables made of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the scale of miles. CNTs can match the conductivity of copper while saving ~70% of the weight.

Even if it doesn’t displace the combustion-engine in aviation when speed and heavy lift are required, solar power’s promise of nearly indefinite sustained flight is likely to expand its role in aeronautics in the near future.

Dr. Joel Abrahamson holds a PhD in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he created nanomaterials for lightweight, high-power electricity generators. He currently researches materials for thin-film, flexible solar cells at the University of Minnesota. The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Minnesota.

Future Tech

Foaming at the Abdominal Chest Cavity

December 10, 2012 Guest Author Leave a comment

A New Darpa Advance Mass Might Offer Hope for Shipboard Injuries

A DARPA announcement today touted the initial results of the Wounded Statis Sytem. The pre-clinical tests showed injecting a polyurethane polymer foam into the chest cavity of an injured servicemember suffering from internal hemorrhaging could increase stoppage of blood loss 6-fold, and boost chances of survival at three hours post-injury from ~8% to 72%. Removing the foam in a singular solid chunk reportedly takes less than one minute after making a small incision.

While the press release is geared toward ground-combat survival, medical departments in the U.S. fleet would surely be just as interested in having a few of these injections on hand in the event of a singular of mass casualty incident requiring a medical evac for just this reason:

The Department of Defense’s medical system aspires to a standard known as the “Golden Hour” that dictates that troops wounded on the battlefield are moved to advanced-level treatment facilities within the first 60 minutes of being wounded. In advance of transport, initial battlefield medical care administered by first responders is often critical to injured servicemembers’ survival. In the case of internal abdominal injuries and resulting internal hemorrhaging, however, there is currently little that can be done to stanch bleeding before the patients reach necessary treatment facilities; internal wounds cannot be compressed the same way external wounds can, and tourniquets or hemostatic dressings are unsuitable because of the need to visualize the injury. The resulting blood loss often leads to death from what would otherwise be potentially survivable wounds.

DARPA launched its Wound Stasis System program in 2010 in the hopes of finding a technological solution that could mitigate damage from internal hemorrhaging. The program sought to identify a biological mechanism that could discriminate between wounded and healthy tissue, and bind to the wounded tissue. As the program evolved, an even better solution emerged: Wound Stasis performer Arsenal Medical, Inc. developed a foam-based product that can control hemorrhaging in a patient’s intact abdominal cavity for at least one hour, based on swine injury model data. The foam is designed to be administered on the battlefield by a combat medic, and is easily removable by doctors during surgical intervention at an appropriate facility, as demonstrated in testing.

Up next is clinical testing, and before long, someone you know may have an interesting memento bearing the faint impression of their internal organs.

LT Scott Cheney-Peters is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and the former editor of Surface Warfare magazine. He is the founding director of the Center for International Maritime Security and holds a master’s degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.