world, getting food, munitions, and
so forth out to the troops is a simple
matter of throwing supplies in the
back of a truck and hitting the road.
But in Afghanistan, roads aren’t
always a viable option, largely for
reasons of safety. To put it bluntly,
Afghanistan’s roads are a very dangerous place—roughly 60 percent of
all military casualties are from
Improvised Explosive Devices,
commonly known as IEDs. In fact,
IEDs are the number one killer of
troops, security forces, and civilians.
Even if the safety threats could be
eliminated, Afghanistan’s road network leaves something to be
desired. The roads themselves are
rudimentary, and they don’t always
go to the sorts of places the U.S.
military wants to go. As Alan
Estevez, acting assistant secretary of
defense for logistics and materiel
readiness, puts it, “Infrastructure in
Afghanistan is almost nonexistent.”
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Adding to the problem is a lack of
alternatives to over-the-road moves.
The landlocked country has no seaports, no railroads, and no navigable rivers. That leaves air as the only
other option, and there are a number of difficulties with regard to
conventional methods of air resupply. Afghanistan has just 16 airports
with paved runways, and only four
of those can accommodate international cargo shipments. Building
more runways or even small landing
zones would be impractical because
of the country’s mountainous terrain.
Other options are also problematical. In some remote locations, the
military uses guided parachutes that
can follow a radio beacon to a target. But these parachutes are vulnerable to wind currents, and in mountainous Afghanistan, wind is a near
constant.
Manned cargo helicopters can
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carry loads slung under their bellies, but
cargo helicopters are vulnerable to attack.
Even small arms fire can put pilots and
their crews at risk.
Testing under way
That last obstacle is one the Navy thinks it
can overcome. The answer, it says, is an
unmanned helicopter, which it calls “a vertical lift Cargo UAS [Unmanned Aerial
System].” In a draft document issued by the
Naval Air Systems Command this past
summer, the Navy laid out its requirements
for this “aerial system”: It has to be able to
reach an altitude of 14,000 feet while carrying 750 pounds of cargo loaded on a standard wood pallet. In addition, the helicopter must have a roundtrip range of 125
miles, including a 20-minute fuel reserve.
This is no whiteboard exercise.
Prototypes have already been built, and
testing is under way. Earlier this year, the
Marines conducted successful tests of two
different unmanned cargo helicopters at
the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in
Utah, using sling loads to accomplish
resupply. (Dugway was chosen for its similarity to Afghanistan with respect to terrain, weather, and altitude conditions.)
One of the helicopters was the K-MAX
BURRO, an unmanned helicopter developed by Lockheed Martin Corp. and
Kaman Aerospace. The other was Boeing’s
A160T Hummingbird.
Both vehicles met or exceeded requirements. According to documents provided
by one of the participants, tests of the
unmanned cargo helicopters showed they
could hover at 12,000 feet with a 1,500-
pound sling load, deliver 3,000 pounds of
cargo within six hours to a forward operating base more than 75 miles from the supply point, and fly under remote control in
both day- and night-time conditions.
The test results were good enough that
the Department of the Navy has gone
ahead with the next step. It has begun work
on a request for proposals to deliver and
deploy the equipment next year.
The Marines (which are part of the Navy
Department) expect to award a contract
around the end of 2010 for combat-ready
unmanned cargo helicopters. These aircraft
are expected to see action in Afghanistan by
the summer of 2011. ;
