UAV updateU.K. undecided on UAV purchase
The U.K. Defense Ministry’s Dabinett ISR program has two core elements: One is aimed at better exploiting what is already collected by existing platforms; the other is a “deep and persistent” collection capability-to be addressed by a long-endurance UAV; but which UAV?
The United Kingdom’s desire to keep open the choice of a long-range, long-endurance UAV in a pending study has forced the Defense Ministry to nix near-term ambitions for the Reaper.
Aviation Week’s Douglas Barrie writes that a senior air force official says the ministry is, in a sense, “playing for time.” Its Dabinett intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) program will reach the “initial gate” stage of the British procurement process in 2010. Dabinett has two core elements: One is aimed at better exploiting what is already collected by existing platforms; the other is a “deep and persistent” collection capability-to be addressed by a long-endurance UAV.
Determining the choice of UAV for Dabinett is being identified as a key element of the evaluation phase. There have also been suggestions from industry executives that parts of Dabinett could be restructured. “We have yet to start our assessment phase for Dabinett. I think we will go to initial gate and commit to that assessment phase in the new year,” says Air Vice-Marshal Carl Dixon, the ministry’s director of information superiority. “We are still in the concept phase for now. I want the assessment phase in Dabinett to home in on this very issue” — that is, the choice of UAV.
During an appearance before Parliament’s Defense Committee, Dixon said the reason for not bringing the General Atomics Reaper/Predator B UAV system-acquired as an urgent operational requirement-into the main equipment program “is really to do with thinking about what our long-term objectives are for Dabinett and what we need of a core asset in our core program.”
Sounding an understandable note of caution, Dixon admits that while funding for Dabinett is currently adequate, this remains contingent on the outcome of the defense review. The Labor government recently set this process in motion with the launch of a consultation paper. “I would never bet against changes in the equipment program across the piece.” He adds, however: “I would hope that whole endeavor of [command and control and ISR] in the round gets a good belt of wind in a defense review.”
Dixon contends that “we are committing ourselves a bit if we put Reaper in the core program to either a future that-should we wish to increase the number of those kinds of assets — it is more Reaper; or if we choose, for example, to do anything in a U.K. or a European or other collaborative perspective, we would
