US Air Force will not oversee UAVs

The US Air Force will not be the central coordinating agency for medium-to-high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), US deputy defence secretary Gordon England has decided. (See: US air force, army and marines squabble over control of UAV fleet)

Instead, the defense undersecretary for acquisition will create a task force that is to "coordinate critical UAS issues and to develop a way ahead that will enhance operations, enable interdependencies, and streamline acquisition" of unmanned aerial systems (UAS).

Additionally, the Pentagon will keep a closer watch on the unmanned aircraft programmes of the four services. The object is to forestall redundancy and operating miscues. The Joint Requirements Oversight Council will coordinate the development of training and tactics. England has also ordered the merger of the Air Force''s Predator and the Army''s Sky Warrior programmes by October 2008.

England has put down this multi-layer arrangement in a memo to senior civilian and uniformed military officials, released on Thursday 13 September. The move comes in the background of jostling by the individual services over the mechanism for overall command and control over UAS operations.

The regime laid down by England is seen as an interim mechanism that addresses the equities of all the services involved, while the Pentagon looks more closely at the kind of questions that need to be answered, before a more permanent solution can be found.

The move has especially found favour with the Army, which was resisting what it saw as the Air Force muscling in on its territory. The Army believes the interim arrangement will result in increased collaboration between the Army and the Air Force, with a big ability to focus on service specific needs.

Separately, the Army and Air Force have already established a team to work on a common data link for the UAVs, and will now move to create more teams for other areas. Unhappy though it may be with the decision, the Air Force has indicated that it is willing to work within the cooperative framework outlined in England''s memo.

Air Force officials had argued that their service should oversee UAV procurement, as well as operations to better organise the growing numbers of unmanned vehicles flying in the increasingly crowded airspace over battlefields.

The Army and Marines had countered that ground troops should control not only the acquisition but the operation of their own UAVs, to more effectively support fast-moving tactical operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.