By Nick Cook, JDW Aerospace Consultant,
London
Buoyed by successes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator unmanned air vehicle (UAV) goes from strength to strength in the US, where the company has quietly begun construction of a classified addition to the Predator family that is aimed at deep-penetration missions in high-threat environments.
Senior company officials have expressed frustration, however, at the UK's decision to press ahead with its £800 million ($1.3 billion) Watchkeeper UAV development and production programme, when the capability, they say, already exists and could be bought largely off-the-shelf.
Tom Cassidy, president and chief executive officer of General Atomics, visited the UK on 22 June in a bid to persuade the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to test and later procure the Predator B drone for a range of applications, including coastal surveillance. He told Jane's Defence Weekly the MoD "ought to buy a system and use it", given that the "aircraft are available right now".
Cassidy's remarks came as Lord Bach, the UK minister for defence procurement, told the House of Commons Defence Select Committee that the air vehicles the UK is set to procure under its Watchkeeper UAV programme, which is currently in competitive evaluation, were a "generation ahead" of Predator, an assertion that General Atomics officials vehemently refute. "By any measure," one said, "that is untrue."
The Predator A was deployed operationally by the Central Intelligence Agency and the US Air Force (USAF) in the mid-1990s and the UK MoD was briefed on the system at the same time.
Predators have amassed 65,000 flight hours, half of them under combat conditions. The USAF has taken delivery of more than 80 RQ-1A Predator As and is acquiring the MQ-9A Predator B hunter-killer, a turboprop-powered variant with a 32-hour flight endurance and a 10,000 lb gross take-off weight.
The Predator family uses synthetic-aperture radar, a TV/infra-red sensor suite and a datalink to find and track targets and relay data on them in real time. They are armed with the laser-guided Hellfire air-to-surface missile to allow their man-in-the-loop controllers to attack targets of opportunity and the Stinger air-to-air missile for self-defence.