In all military operations, deconfliction or decluttering operating space by communicating with friendly and coalition partners is critical to preventing accidents or casualties.
This is an important component in the air domain in which combat flights and sorties are coordinated across the force.
"Airspace management prevents mutual interference from all users of the airspace, facilitates air defense identification, and accommodates the flow of all air traffic safely," according to an Army field manual from the late 1990s.
"The way we tend to do [deconfliction] now is to set up corridors where specific countries own specific spaces," Thomas Killion, chief NATO scientist and director of technology at the Office of Naval Research, told C4ISRNET in December.
Deconfliction even happens with competitors, as evidenced by the memorandum of understandingthe U.S. inked with Russia over Syrian airspace a year ago to ensure "that ongoing coalition air operations are not interrupted by any future Russian military activity, to ensure the safety of coalition air crews … to avoid misjudgment and miscalculation [because] [w]e do not want an accident to take place," Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook saidat the time.
Deconfliction of airspace will become increasingly critical as airspace becomes more contested and congested with the proliferation of small unmanned aerial systems. According to one estimate, by 2020 there will be 11 million commercial UASs sold in the U.S. alone.
These systems are becoming more available to both non-state actors and nation-states such as Russia, which is currently employing themin Ukraine.
"Russian UAVs are able to fly overhead and spy on formations, [which is something] that we haven’t had to worry about for the past 15 years. And then they’ve got precision fires that are connected to their UAVs," Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, said in August.
As nation-states and non-state groups such as the Islamic State group and Hezbollah — along with the United States military, which has big plans for incorporating these systems in future operating concepts — are beginning to employ small UASs, the likelihood of accidents could increase.
Despite the major operational impacts and plans officials across the joint force have touted of small UASs, many of these plans are still be worked out in concepts, doctrine and training. Some of these concepts involve incorporating swarms of small aircraft that will act as a singular unit. The Air Force released its small UAS flight plan last May, though Col. Brandon Baker, the chief of the Air Force's remotely piloted aircraft capabilities division, said in October — during one of the first major briefs on the Air Force’s plans involving these smaller platforms since the document’s release — that the plan is visionary and should not be read as a list of requirements.
Col. Baker provided a raft of capabilities small UAS could provide to the force. One of the more striking mentioned is the potential to replace, or at the very least, augment larger platforms such as the MQ-9 Reaper. This could be done by purchasing smaller platforms and procuring 1,500 to 2,000 small UASs to accomplish the low end of the mission set — meaning predominately intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission sets, or counterterrorism mission sets conducted by Reapers.
With these robust plans from the Air Force and other services, understanding how to deconflict these systems is even farther off.
"It's really too soon to say how we would or could operate because it's all theoretical now," an Air Force spokeswoman said. "[T]here are still lots of options for the various ways we could use small UAS and each of the different options could have different needs in congested airspace. … We'll continue to develop our tactics, techniques and procedures as the technology evolves."
"Clearly that’s going to be an area for the future and it’s current now," said Brig. Gen. Brian Killough, director of strategy, concepts and assessments and deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements for the Air Force. "As you look at partner nations employing their own UAS systems — you look in Iraq right now; Iraq’s using the Chinese CH-4. We have Predator, there’s already a lot of UASs out there; and finding a way to command and control those within the airspace without causing damage or loss of assets is something we’ll continue to wrestle with. But as far as where we are at the cutting edge of that right now, I couldn’t answer that."
As for the other services, the Army referred responses to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which noted that the Air Force is taking the lead on this effort. Similarly, the Marine Corps told C4ISRNET: "It's recommended that topic should be addressed through a NATO [standardization agreement] STANAG, and the Air Force would be the lead agency for that coordination."
Both of these organizations recently provided robust portfolios for UASs in future operating concepts, with the Marine Corps poised to procure four battalions’ worth of small UASs.
For its part, the Navy offered that their UAS operations and missions both with and without allied participation are primarily deconflicted procedurally. This process, a spokeswoman told C4ISRNET, "has worked extremely well and it is anticipated to [work well] in future operations."
"Outside of contingency and combat operations, Navy UAS are often flown under civil flight rules or in accordance with agreements with civil authorities to ensure airspace deconfliction between all participants in civil controlled airspace," the spokeswoman added. "Additionally, peacetime UAS missions flown over the high seas, not conducted under civil rules, are conducted using Department of Defense mandated procedures to ensure the safe separation of our UAS and all other aircraft. One of the acceptable deconfliction procedures calls for the use of a service-certified sense and avoid system. We are committed to continually exploring evolving technologies that may enable such a capability in small UAS."
Killion, the NATO scientist, said that the issue of deconfliction as it applies to these small platforms will be an emerging problem given that airspace management can be a challenge.
"If you introduce many more entities into that space, you’re going to need that tool in order to manage, particularly when you’re talking about coalition forces with mixes of systems from different countries," he said. "I think as we go forward, you’re going to see more integration across those countries, and we’ll have to have the capability to manage that."
Mark Pomerleau is a reporter for C4ISRNET, covering information warfare and cyberspace.
