Reaching Farther, Risking Less
Remotely Crewed Systems’ ISR Applications for Great Power Competition
September 22, 2021
The Issue
As the world returns to great power competition, remotely crewed systems play an important role in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) work in contested spaces; this brief examines the Department of Defense’s development and procurement for remotely crewed systems, comparing its budget and strategy. While remotely crewed systems’ most important contribution is mitigating the risk of physical harm to the warfighter, they offer additional advantages including longer flight duration, increasing the number of passes craft can make and the fidelity of information obtained, and lower costs per effects, including both purchase costs and costs per flying hour. While the Air Force established an early lead in remotely crewed systems’ use and the majority of systems remain aerial, recent years have seen a steep decline in budget dedicated to Air Force remotely crewed systems, perhaps reflecting a shift to classified systems. Recent trendlines also indicate a marked increase in Navy spending, a portion of which has fueled growth in remotely crewed maritime systems.
Introduction
Almost as soon as humans could become airborne, militaries have been searching for assets from the air.
The first military observation plane went into the air just six years after the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk—and from the first days of U-2 surveillance, finding the object of the mission while avoiding detection has centered on aerial assets flying higher and faster.1 Half a century after that first observation plane, remotely crewed systems made their first large-scale strategic appearance in the Vietnam War. Now, half a century after that finds a world returning to great power competition with an intense race to develop and build remotely crewed systems.2
A July 2021 paper by CSIS’s Seth Jones outlined one of the greatest challenges in great power competition as hiding and finding; that is, finding the assets and maneuvers our adversaries attempt to conceal.3Not only does this challenge place a greater weight on the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) mission set, but it also marks an operational shift toward contested spaces. As the focus of the ISR mission tightens around these challenges, more effort will be spent against adversaries and near-peer competition—a theme which shaped the March 2020 force postures of the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, and U.S. Navy. Their renewed emphasis on contested environments and classified systems, for both crewed and remotely crewed systems, would have felt familiar in the 1960s.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/reaching-farther-risking-less
