UAV-based anti-missile defense appears doomed

After a U.S. government-sponsored study and flight tests, Northrop Grumman has determined that using UAVs to thwart missile attacks on airliners near airports (see 9 October 2008 HS Daily Wire story) is too costly to be practical. The results may well mean the end for DHS’s Project Chloe, which has considered using a long-endurance UAV such as the Northrop RQ-4 Global Hawk to protect airliners from shoulder-fired missiles.

FlightGlobal’s Stephen Trimble writes that in DHS’s vision, a single UAV would loiter at about 65,000 feet above an airport, detecting missile launches fired at airliners inside the airport’s traffic pattern. The UAV would then fire a laser through more than ten miles of atmosphere to scramble the missile’s infrared-seeker.

Northrop’s study and flight tests for Project Chloe, however, discovered that the concept is more — far more — complex and costly than DHS officials imagined. First, flight tests in August using the Scaled Composites White Knight testbed proved that a high-altitude UAV could detect and jam an IR-guided missile at long range — but “there’s still a number of technology gaps before you’d have the right kind of system”, says David Denton, a Northrop program manager. Northrop’s study also shows that each airport must be guarded by three high-altitude UAVs on station simultaneously, instead of a single aircraft. “You’re looking at a fleet of great numbers,” Denton says. “It becomes a very costly approach.”

Northrop plans to deliver a concept of operations to DHS by the end of January to complete its part of the Project Chloe contract. “DHS has not suggested there’s any continuation of the program for Chloe and anti-MANPADS,” Denton says. “They have not suggested to us there is any more funding.” Instead, Northrop believes a cheaper and more effective solution is to install laser-based countermeasures on the world’s airliners, starting with the aircraft leaving US airspace and landing in potentially hostile or unstable areas.