Highlights from the RAeS Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit

What is the future of combat air and space capabilities? TIM ROBINSON FRAeS and STEPHEN BRIDGEWATER report from two days of high-level debate and discussion at the RAeS FCAS23 Summit.

On 23-24 May the Royal Aeronautical Society hosted a landmark defence conference, the Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit, at its HQ in London, bringing together just under 70 speakers and 200+ delegates from the armed services industry, academia and the media from around the world to discuss and debate the future size and shape of tomorrow’s combat air and space capabilities.

The topics ranged from lessons from the current war in Ukraine, resilience and agile operations, interoperability, space, multidomain operations, future sixth-gen platforms, low-cost drones, loyal wingman, to training, cyber, simulation, AI, deterrence and hypersonics and even speculative fiction’s role in predicting the future. The Summit had an extremely strong international presence – including speakers from the US, France, Germany, Brazil, Greece and Japan, representing the intense interest in building up national defences in the face of new and emerging threats. Organisations and companies represented included the RAF, NATO, USAF, UK Strategic Command, French Air Force, Luftwaffe, Brazilian Air Force, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, Draken Europe, Reaction Engines, Freeman Air and Space Institute, Cranfield University, RUSI, British Army and Royal Navy to name just a few, giving an extremely wide range of views, thoughts and opinions. The Q&A sessions too, were notable in lively, pointed and extremely robust questions, with delegates showing no signs of running out of things to ask panellists and speakers.

With so many speakers, and dual track sessions it is impossible to cover all the presentations in an article such as this, and this will only provide a snapshot of what was two days of intensive and thought-provoking presentations and a flavour of what was discussed. Let us take a look at some of the highlights.

Listen to Editor in Chief Tim Robinson and Deputy Editor Stephen Bridgewater chat about some of their highlights on the AEROSPACE NOTAM podcast.

AeroSociety Podcast · NOTAM Combat Air Space Summit

Resilience and agility

AM Stringer laid out air and space lessons from Ukraine. (Stephen Bridgewater/RAeS)

Lessons from Ukraine were obviously uppermost in many people’s minds since the Russian invasion in February 2022, and the Summit featured a number of speakers who addressed how air forces could become more resilient and agile. Deputy Commander NATO Air Command, AM Johnny Stringer RAF, kicked off the conference by giving a high-level overview of some of the key operational level implications from Ukraine, including Electronic Warfare, the “need to be serious about integrated air and missile defence” and the importance of SEAD. He noted: “What you are seeing particularly in Ukraine at the moment, is how essential it is to secure the necessary level of access to airspace. If you don't, standby for a bloody attritional slog with images that look like they have come out of World War One”.

This view was echoed by Maj Gen James Kriesel, National Guard Assistant to the Commander, USAFE-A, later in the day, who said that “there are some out there that say that air dominance is not critical. And that what matters is owning key terrain, mashing of forces and logistics to really support an artillery slugfest. I disagree. If anything is conflict demonstrates that the protracted brutality of a conflict where neither side has gained air dominance”.

On resilience, Stringer noted with modern ISR: “It is very difficult to hide. It is very difficult to hide expensive aircraft and it's very difficult to hide big expensive aircraft. So, we need to be thoughtful about how we solve dispersal and effective deception. What is the correct role is for hardening and what genuine agility means as well?”

Stringer pointed to new NATO Member Finland as providing some genuine insights into agile combat employment (ACE), now becoming a buzzword among Western air forces as they rediscover forgotten Cold War skills, calling their approach “rather impressive” and asking ‘how do we generate something like that?”

AM Phil Osborn, Strategic Advisor to Lockheed Martin, concurred in a later panel, saying there were: "Significant lessons to be learnt from [Finland] on resilience" and adding that the current strategic situation is one of most complex ones that West has faced.

Nordic resilience

Sweden plans to keep its air force on the move in time of war. (Saab)

On the theme of Nordic nations and resilience, another presentation saw Lt Col Carl Bergqvist, Chief of Plans, Swedish Air Force who outlined his air force’s method of surviving and fighting on with dispersed operation – which has been developed and honed over decades. In the SwAF, a network of main bases and forward operating bases will allow aircraft to disperse and keep constantly on the move, with some forward bases only being open for a couple of hours. Fast turnarounds (a Gripen can be rearmed for an air-to-air mission in less than 10mins) make the SwAF an extremely agile force. The Summit heard how Sweden’s ‘shell game’ contrasts with the Royal Norwegian Air Force, a F-35A operator, which is focusing on beefing up its SAM air defences to increase its resilience.

This balance between, dispersal, hardening, defence, along with numbers for attrition was one that made for interesting discussions on ACE and it is clear that ‘no one size fits all’. Other presentations on resilience; its challenges and opportunities from Paul Stoddart, Scientific Advisor, RAF Checkmate, and Air Cdre Shaun Harris, ACOS 4, HQ Air Command, were also highly illuminating in raising additional issues – particularly on logistics – with Harris noting what was needed was a ‘Common Logistics Operating Picture’.

Meanwhile as welcome as Western support to Kyiv has been in supplying arms and ammunition in halting Russia in its tracks, the vast and bewildering variety of tanks, helicopters, missiles, drones and artillery sent to Ukraine has highlighted cracks in NATOs standardisation and generated lessons for future joint defence procurement, said Stacy Cummings, GM Manager at NATO’s Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA). In particular, she revealed that incompatibilities in NATO standard artillery ammunition had been a wake-up call for interoperability. “That was probably a bit shocking for the nations that were donating ammunition to Ukraine to find out if they didn't donate the system and ammunition at the same time, the donating ammunition wasn't usable in the system”.

She advised: “What I think is a major lesson learned out of Ukraine is that we in NATO need to look across the different types of systems that we're supporting and figure out ways to come together to trust each other's development to be able to buy military off-the-shelf equipment, that our allies and our neighbours has already designed, developed and tested. She added “This would go a step further, which is to look at legacy systems that have been donated, and not to replace them with more legacy systems, but to come together to design and develop the next generation of weapon systems in order to support NATO, with fewer variants with fewer differences, so that we can become more affordable,

GCAP progress

BAE Systems showed of the latest version of its augmented reality fighter cockpit which now features a 3D holographic map. (Tim Robinson/RAeS)

Some five years on from the UK revealing the ‘Tempest’ mockup as the core future fighter for its Combat Air plan at Farnborough Air Show, Herman Clausen, Managing Director FCAS, BAE Systems, gave an update on GCAP from the UK industry point of view as the lead company in Team Tempest. The effort has now gone global and expanded with the addition of Japan as a partner on the programme in December – as well as the goal of flying a supersonic, stealthy demonstrator within the next four years, to support an ISD of 2035. Clausen said “We are now well into the UK Concept and Assessment phase and we are getting ready in the next 12 months for the outline business case number two”. With the supporting evidence and technology assembled, and given the full ‘go’ decision by UK Government, “Our next major milestone after that is launching the full blown design and development programme at the start of 2025” said Clausen. In the UK, alone, the enterprise involves some 580 companies and organisations from traditional aerospace OEMS to academia and even video gaming and Formula One. The FCAS programme now employs almost 3,000 people directly, and most significant of all, 1,000 of these are new graduates – helping shift the demographics of the UK’s military aerospace sector to a younger, more diverse workforce of ‘digital natives’.

Meanwhile, the programme’s use of digital twins, and model-based system engineering (MBSE) in its digital design and development already paying off – with Clausen saying “the use of modern software processes are showing 50-70% schedule savings and 25-30% cost savings” compared to legacy projects.

Meanwhile, in the exhibition space for sponsors, BAE Systems has brought along the latest public demo of its augmented reality cockpit concept for GCAP/Tempest. This has now been enhanced and updated since it was first revealed with a map that can be toggled in the AR space from a 2D to a 3D isometric perspective. This can be tilted, rotated and zoomed in and out – with contacts clicked on to bring up further information. This AR cockpit though is not just Iron Man-like visual interfaces, say BAE, but will also include biometrics, awareness, eye tracking and stress monitoring of the human part of the system. Personalised for each individual, this will allow the aircraft to take over some of the core functions should it sense the pilot getting overwhelmed or task-saturated.

Entente and interoperability

For possibly the first time, the heads of FCAS in the UK (left) and France's SCAF (middle) were on the same panel. (Tim Robinson/RAeS)

With the context of today’s strategic environment set, the Summit also included presentations on future capabilities including next gen fighters, combat clouds, UAVs or space. Perhaps the most newsworthy and unique panel was provided on the first day, which saw, possibly for the first time at public forum, the chiefs of the UK’s FCAS (Richard Berthon, Director Future Combat Air, UK) and French SCAF (Maj Gen Jean-Luc Moritz, Head of SCAF, French Air Force) sat together. While GCAP (the international programme comprising UK, Italy and Japan) and the Franco-German Spanish FCAS (of which the Next-Generation Weapon System (NGWS) is the ‘Tempest’ equivalent of the central platform) are commonly seen as bitter rivals, the summit heard more on the common ground than any differences. Indeed, Maj Gen Jean-Luc Moritz, Head of SCAF, French Air Force, went further and said: “My dream is tomorrow, a Tempest could take control of a NGWS asset” adding; “My dream is a NGAD could take control of FCAS UK, and a Rafale and Tempest fly together in a joint operation”. He stressed: “sixth generation aircraft must guarantee interoperability by design”.

Richard Berthon, Director Future Combat Air, UK, confirmed that there are indeed links between the UK and France on common ground between these two next generation combat air programmes, that was built on the previous cancelled Anglo-French joint UCAV – and it “was a mechanism that we can use for whatever we see as necessary.” However, he warned: “I'm sceptical of trying to do too much bilaterally - there's also a much wider conversation involving other international partners to bring together the connectivity, integration and interoperability challenges”.

The question is often asked – how can Europe support two expensive competing next generation fighter programmes – especially against the might of the US? However, what is interesting, is that given the sheer scale of the threat from China with mass and quality in air power, GCAP, SCAF and NGAD are all needed and will complement each other. Said Berthon of GCAP: “we bring to the table an open-mindedness to look beyond the narrative of how many programmes you can have in Europe to think, well actually, the globe is a wider place”.

Giving that global view from one of the GCAP partners, Japan, was Maj Gen (Rtd) Koji Imaki, who outlined the Japan Air Self Defense Force’s (JASDFs) strategic challenge and its procurement priorities. Particularly interesting was his observations on how Japan was looking to use drones (both exquisite and attritable) to build out combat mass from 5th/6^th crewed fighters in a affordable way. The correct mix and balance between high-end loyal wingman, attritable drones and low-cost consumer devices was one that that was returned to in other presentations and it seems the jury is still out of what a future fighter squadron looks like, but all at the Summit seemed to agree on the importance of ‘loyal wingman’ or ‘Collaborative Combat Aircraft’ (CCA.) As Lauren Knausenberger, Chief Information Officer, USAF noted CCAs will be one of the "biggest gamechangers coming down the pipeline” with the US planning to acquire 1,000 of these.

Another interesting discussion centred around the definitions of fifth and sixth generation platforms – especially regarding data. While it was agreed that fifth generation platforms, such as the F-35 hoover up information, they tend to hold on to within their own secure networks with one speaker describing it as “selfish beast”. Sixth generation then - means spreading and pushing information out across wider data networks naturally.

Cyber lessons from Ukraine

Air Cdre Jim Beck, ACOS - Capability Strategy. HQ Air Command, revealed how the Russians had suffered 50% attrition of their air platforms in the first 28 days of their invasion of Ukraine. (Tim Robinson/RAeS)

Understandably, the lessons learned so far from the war in Ukraine were key themes of the summit. Among the international representation discussing the top was Lt Col Johnny Resman, Chief Cyber Development Officer; Air Staff Plans, Swedish Air Force who claimed that “if Russia manages to maintain its foothold in Ukraine it will turn the Iron Curtain into an Iron Dome.”

“It will enable with an integrated air and missile defence system from the Kola Peninsula down to the Black Sea” he explained, adding that Russia was likely to use “occupied territories within Belarus to increase that capacity.”

“We therefore need think in new ways, use new technologies and new tactics to accomplish our military goals” Resman told the audience, “the cyber realm is therefore vital especially as connectivity increases as we boost the numbers of sensors and collaborating operators in the combat environment. We need to exploit – or be exploited.”

Wg Cdr Dave Collins - Director of the RAF’s Air Cyber and Information Services Operations Centre shared the stage with Resman and elaborating on the cyber warfare subject asked a very pertinent question: “Can we realistically protect everything? Or should we learn to live with the fact that we can’t?”

With everyday life now increasingly reliant on satellite and cyber technologies – from banking to traffic lights – we may need to prioritise the defence of critical infrastructure. Collins also floated the question of when a cyber compromise crosses the threshold of armed conflict? “There’s a generally held belief that there’s a line somewhere, but where is it and who will decide? Between Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and the present day there have been significant disruptive and destructive cyber compromises which have had both intended and unintended consequences.

Collins also explained that the first year of the Ukraine War had provided unprecedented amounts of data; something that we have not had access to from previous conflicts. “There is some incredible open source data coming out of Ukraine” he pointed out, adding that “some of the reports being published by Microsoft would have ‘Top Secret’ stamped on them if they’d been produced by the military!”

Dr Daniel Clarke - Director of Applied Technology at Gallos Technologies and Lecturer at Cranfield Defence and Security, Cranfield University spoke passionately on the subject of achieving technical advantage for future air-capability in multidomain operations.

“In five decades we moved from thousands of WW2 bombers, each with ten crew aboard, indiscriminately dropping hundreds of thousands of tonnes of bombs to the first Gulf War where around 10% of munitions were deployed with autonomous terminal guidance and precision guidance, allowing us to put far fewer aircraft and therefore far fewer people in harm's way” he began by saying. “Then, during Operation Shader [in Syria and Iraq], the RAF used only precision guided munitions with the service claiming at one point that these had caused no unintended casualties. Now, if you look at some of the doctrine that we've been developing over the last five years, and in particular post Afghanistan, we've started to sort of consider what that integrated technology means on a bigger scale.”

“Integration runs across domains but also across allies” continued Clarke. “There is no such thing is air power on its own. It's air and space power, in conjunction with naval sea power and land forces. And actually, if you look at the joint concept, the concept of cyber electromagnetic activity is integral to all of those domains.”

Collaboration

Building interoperability across domains and international alliances was a major theme of the Summit. (Tim Robinson/RaeS)

Like many presenters at the summit, Clarke argued that the defence industry needs to lean more from other sectors. However, he also urged caution at interoperability and collaboration.

Having spent a decade developing robots and autonomous cars he pointed out that much of the technology used in the military’s last-mile delivery vehicles was almost identical. “I would wager that the software stack is the same that was developed for the Grand Challenge back in 2004/2005 and has permeated its way through every single autonomous vehicle being developed today” he opined. “If so, this presents a huge challenge to defence vehicles in terms of security.” He went on to point out that autonomous cars have already been ‘hacked’ and, as the Ukraine War has demonstrated, the need for reliable supply of equipment, food and ammunition could be at threat. Why bomb a column of supply vehicles when you can simply ‘turn them off’? Or as Clarke asked: “Why shoot down a jet when you can steer the pilot’s car into a ditch before he’s even reached the airfield?”

He also emphasised that there is research happening today by a Chinese professor in an American university looking at how to disrupt machine learning single classification. “So our ability to detect an adversary signals could be compromised because of research that is going on in the civilian domain” he concludes. “Looking at emerging cyber capabilities; if you put wideband signal processing and machine learning RF signals into Google Scholar you will see thousands of pages of research – almost all of them from China.”

Meanwhile Dr Arif Mustafa - Chief Digital Information Officer, RAF highlighted the vast and exponential growth of computing power, that threaten to outpace military platforms, “I received my fist Commodore 64 computer in 1982, just three years after the Tornado entered service. The Tornado continued in service until 2020, by which time the PlayStation 5 had been introduced. Compared to the C64 that represented an improvement of FLOPS processing power to the power of 10 billion! Over those same four decades other technologies progressed including widespread access to the internet and mobile phones – so if Tempest is projected to remain in service until 2080 – where will technology be by then? We need to be able to significantly grow the capabilities of the airframe and systems to absorb future paradigm shifts in technology.”

“The conflict in Ukraine has shown us that we need to adapt quickly” continued Dr Mustafa, “whether it’s mounting missiles on aircraft that they were not designed to carried them or updating Starlink software overnight to counter jamming. It has also proved that interoperability is vital and we can only do this by partnering closely with industry and identifying opportunities. It is also essential to make data more widely available.”

Commercial off the shelf (COTS)

Low-cost drones have been game-changer in Ukraine. (Yuriy Kasyanov/Facebook)

The war in Ukraine has seen huge exploitation of commercial off the shelf (COTS) equipment for military means. “Ukrainians are achieving some spectacular success with a bunch of civilian technology that can be bought from anywhere between Amazon and Ali Baba” said Clarke. “There are examples of Ukrainian forces working with enthusiast drone operators and even tasking a 14-year old with a DJI Mavic to scout out a column of the tanks. Other examples have included a vigilante SIGINT operator in the form of a guy who's got a software defined radio that listens to Russian radio communications, find out the frequency and posts it on Twitter so that the military can use it. That is spanning that whole multi domain space – from the protect and engage to warfighting.”

“Things like the DJI Mavic offer a brilliant capability,” he continued. “I can go to Amazon and buy 30 of them for less than the cost of buying one of the Black Hornets UAVs used by many militaries. Does UK PLC need to have its own version of the DJI Mavic? Do we need to introduce resilience in this way?”

One UK group pursuing the COTS system is the British Army’s Royal Yeomanry (RY). The unit’s Executive Officer, Maj Arthur Purbrick was joined at the summit by Sqn Ldr Ben Hayler and Mr Richard White, the latter a civilian serving as OC Drone Troop and Project Lead for Project Panorpa.

The three spoke candidly about the self-initiated project to acquire an RPAS/UAS system for the RY, which is a Light Reconnaissance Unit staffed mostly by reservists. Maj Purbrick addressed the audience and explained that as a recce unit his team would be expected to operate ahead of the battle line in a time of conflict. “Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine has shown that troops are often out in front of existing uncrewed air solutions”, he explained. “Therefore the democratisation of UAS is absolutely critical to our success and we have to be able to learn and adapt within that cycle. However, we need you. We need you to challenge us. We need you to provide that information and to help us build this solution together.”

“If Army Reserve is that bridge between the civilian and military cooperation, which I'm convinced it is, then our trial operation of COTS drones is very exciting.”

Sqn Ldr Hayler elaborated, adding that “The unit was only formed a year ago so in terms of the concept we are still developing our understanding of how we, as the deep recce strike combat element in lightly armoured four wheel drive Jackal vehicles up to 30 or 40 kilometres beyond the forward line, are going to communicate with sensors and fire units including the HIMARS etc. We firmly believe that that is in the small handheld quadcopter.

White revealed that the unit has begun collaborating with a Leicester company called Skylift to develop a bespoke drone using COTS third party platforms. “We essentially got our own credit cards out” he explained, adding that Skylift has created “a base unit that we can add and subtract bits to and fix easily.”

Maj Purbrick pointed out that some Army units are already operating relatively sophisticated and expensive UAS systems. “The Queen’s Dragoon Guards are fresh back from Mali,” he explained. “They took around 30 UAVs with them and we came back to two! They broke, they got lost, they deteriorated with the conditions and couldn’t be fixed - there aren’t many trees in Mali but they found them! So we [the Army] have expensive, unique, long contract RPAS craft that lack options and lack adaptability whereas our potential adversaries have cheap, quick, easy to repair or disposable and most often lethal COTS drones. If they're not lethal by direct effects, they’re lethal by the effect that they can bring upon us.”

He closed by admitting that “we're going to really struggle when it comes to the framework that allows us to drop bad stuff on people, but what we need is the ability to build our own UAS and adapt it to the situation that demands. It can be mobile command and control station, a Wi Fi re-router, an ISTAR platform or it can simply rebroadcast radio transmissions.”

The team then engaged in after session discussions with numerous attendees regarding the potential minefield of CAA and MAA paperwork required to turn their dream into a reality.

Forging Excalibur

2Excel Aviation are now on the hunt for engineers to covert a Boeing 757 into a future fighter lab. (2Excel Aviation)

While much of the effort towards FCAS is going on behind closed doors and in classified facilities, there was a peek behind the curtain when Chris Norton, Co-founder and Director of 2Excel Aviation described his companies work into converting a Boeing 757 into a sixth generation fighter airborne laboratory to support the Team Tempest effort. 2Excel Aviation has made a name for itself in developing special mission aircraft in record time, by doing the design, integration and modification work for itself, whether it is oil spill 727s, Extra aerobatic aircraft converted to train JTACs, or King Airs converted into mini-MPA in a staggering eight months. The 757 was chosen because of its size, weight and power, with the RB211 engines able to provide excess power for the sophisticated sensors, avionics and flight test equipment, that will see its external shape spout a number of antennas., dishes and cones. “It's sleek, it's smooth, and we're going to ruin all of that.” quipped Norton.

Adding these ‘lumps and bumps’ to a civil airliner brings its own challenges – for example – what will swapping out a tiny weather radar in the nose for a fighter radar do to the CoG? To that end, Norton revealed that it had completely disassembled a second 757 to provide data for a mass, balance and structural digital twin. “In short, we've turned millions of pounds of aircraft into tens of millions of pounds worth of data. It is extreme, but digitalisation will prove our model with baseline tests.

Once in service with Leonardo, the UK will be only the third nation with this sort of highly sophisticated stealth fighter testbed after the US and China.

Close encounters of the satellite kind

AVM Paul Godfrey, Head of UK Space Command, revealed how commercial providers were enhancing space domain awareness. (Tim Robinson/RAeS)

Another big theme from the Summit was the increasing role of space as a domain - even though it is still very much taken for granted something that still "surprises" him, noted AVM Paul Godfrey, Head of UK Space Command. He revealed that UK Space Command is now leveraging the commercial sector via the Joint Task Force-Space Defense Commercial Operations Cell (JCO) to boost its space domain awareness (SDA) via open-source methods. Indeed, he said, only this week, a Luch Russian military communications satellite with a ELINT payload, has been spotting “operating outside its normal pattern of life” he said. “Normally, it doesn't come within 150km of another satellite, but is now sitting 13km away from Intelsat 27”. He also highlighted another Chinese satellite, which also had made three unexplained manoeuvres in the past week, and again is a SIGINT satellite. These reports of orbital activity, coming from the commercial space sector via JCO allows military operators to share information that would previously be highly classified, to build awareness, transparency and trust. Said Godfrey of the Luch close encounter: “This is not something I thought I’d ever be able to say at a public conference, but that is what JCO allows us to do”.

Meanwhile, later in the day, another presentation from Wg Cdr Rebecca Hollis, Wing Commander Capability, UK Space Command revealed how the UK is further aiming to enhance its SDA awareness by looking to exploit the geography of its Overseas Territories by installing commercial sensors there to track activity in space. With locations like the Falkland Islands, Ascension, Diego Garcia and others, these could be an extremely useful capability in plugging gaps in monitoring space for the UK and its partners.

Another space presentation from Julia Balm, PhD candidate at the Freeman Air & Space Institute. KCL considered the growing vulnerability of space infrastructure. This can not just be from hostile space actors, she said, but also electromagnetic storms and sunspots – space weather. Furthermore, she noted the LEO megaconstellation satellite industry in the US had become increasingly concentrated in one place – with both Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper almost next door in Seattle, Washington – bringing a new physical vulnerability.

Counter UAS

What will the world look like in 2050? Ahead of the release of Global Strategic Trends 7, AVM Fin Monaham, Director of the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, UK Strategic Command provided this outline of potential scenarios. (Tim Robinson/RAeS)

Whereas many discussions over the two days focused on the use of RPAS/UAS as an offensive weapon or intelligence gathering asset the future of counter UAS technologies was highlighted by Charlie Lynn, Chief of Staff at the MoD’s Joint C-UAS Office.

Lynn started his role just after the drone incursions at Gatwick airport in December 2018 and spent “most of 2021 spent in an operational theatre, working with coalition partners conducting an urgent operational analysis of counter UAS capabilities.”

He explained to the audience that all manner of high value and strategic assets are vulnerable to attack by UAS platforms from ships to buildings, but the threat also extended to air safety and public events.

“In warfare you need an understanding of who your adversary is, what their strategic objectives are and how they have a capability to achieve those objectives,” he opined. “Here we are looking at across a much wider, holistic spectrum, which is largely unregulated and your adversaries could be almost anybody. It could be a foreign state actor, a hostile intelligence service, a terrorist organisation, a protest organisation or a lone wolf. Then we need to ask what they are trying to achieve; is it a ISR or surveillance effect? Are they looking to achieve some form of external communications or propaganda effect? Could it be a disruption or other malintent?”

Counter UAS operators have a difficult task on their hands. Many devices fly low and slow – making them difficult to target - but Lynn pointed out that “both sides of the conflict in Ukraine are now adapting racing drones that have speeds of over 250mph. We are also seeing potential adversaries moving away from systems that actually transmit signals to those which operate autonomously.”

Lynn felt that the key to successful counter UAS operations is an ability to deliver continuous coverage. “Systems Integration is absolutely critical” he emphasised, “and we have to ensure that we are interoperable not only amongst ourselves, which is actually quite a challenge, but also with key coalition partners as well. We have to take advantage of forces that have strengths we need to exploit and blend it into an open architecture system that allows us to maximise our ability to deliver continuous effects at range. We can't go back to the traditional ways of looking at a single capability provider.”

Lynn freely admitted that the biggest challenge keeping pace with the rapid development of UAS platforms. “Drones are evolving in terms of hours, not days, months or years” he pointed out. “As a defence procurement organisation, how do you keep pace with that? How do we ensure that our systems are relevant to the future threat set, and how do we evolve at a pace to meet those new challenges? Do we need to stop looking at our ability to just buy a system or a capability or start buying services?”

The proliferation of COTS drones in Ukraine posed another question for Lynn. “They have now become almost disposable items,” he emphasised, “and operators run the risk of tripping up their own capabilities. If both sides of the conflict are using these devices, how do you recognise which one of yours and which is your adversaries capability?”

This translates onto the home front too, with ever numbers of delivery drones, eVTOLs and other low level rotary traffic predicted to boom in coming years, how do counter UAS operators identify the malicious threat from legitimate commercial drone activity?

Protector into service

Protector will be a giant leap for the RAF's RPAS capability. (RAF)

One RPAS expected to appear in UK skies later this year is the RAF’s Protector. Stephen Hesketh, Deputy Chief Engineer for RG-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper Air Systems within the MoD appeared at the summit and updated the audience on the introduction of Protector into service.

Based on the US General Atomics MQ-9B Sky Guardian, Hesketh described Protector as “the world's first certifiable RPAS.”

Compared to its predecessors this UCAV has around twice the endurance and comes with a synthetic aperture radar, target indication and, crucially, TCAS ADS-B and IFF. The latter three enable it to fly in controlled airspace, something that its predecessors cannot.

“That requires certification,” continued Hesketh, “and we have done this through the UK MAA. Not only will Protector be the world's first certified RPAS, it's actually the first air system in the UK to be certified from scratch by the MAA. There are around 1,700 individual requirements that General Atomics has had to prove to us – and us to the MAA – that they meet the safety legislation. The programme began around ten years ago, so this is not a rapid capability – it has been a hugely lengthy, complex and ultimately expensive test programme that has cost in excess of £1bn to bring into service. Planned future enhancements include a Due Regard Radar and Non-cooperative Detect and Avoid System as well as a Maritime Protector variant with search radar and electronic support measures.

“We are receiving 16 Protectors,” said Hesketh, “with the first example due to arrive at RAF Waddington in October and the first UK flights expected before the end of the year. The in-service date is currently penned in for Q3 of 2024 with an IOC in the ISR role in early 2025. IOC in weaponised configuration is slated for Q3 of 2025.”

Protector also has an automatic take-off and landing capability so whereas Reaper needed to have aircrew at the landing and take-off location to manually pilot the aircraft onto and off of the ground, Protector crews will be located at RAF Waddington. Pressed on resilience and the concerns of having all of the Protector operating facilities at a single base Hesketh responded: “There are currently no plans to have an alternative operating location. So, yes, if something genuinely catastrophic happens to Waddington, then the capability does disappear. But our experience with Reaper and the way the system has been designed, and I would suggest that with the threat that we see in the UK, a single operating location at RAF Waddington is sufficient resilience.”

Getting the live/virtual mix right

Draken's L-159 Honey Badgers are now sharpening Typhoon and F-35 pilot's air combat skills. (Draken/Paul Heasman)

Another session, with representatives from No6 FTS, ABTC Air Warfare Centre, Draken Europe and the UK F-35 Lightning force considered the thorny issue of delivering operational readiness training. This has been boosted recently by the introduction of Gladiator – the RAF’s new distributed synthetic training facility – which links simulators at RAF bases with each other, and with other UK services to create a multidomain training environment. Meanwhile, in live training, L-159 Honey Badgers, operated by ‘Red Air’ contractor Draken have taken over aggressor duties from 100 Sqns Hawk to challenge Typhoon and F-35 pilots.

However, as recent headlines have made clear, there still remain issues with the RAF’s training pipeline with long holds for students, engine issues with Hawk T2s and the bottlenecks at the OCUs due to lack of instructors. Grp Capt Rob Caine, Commandant No6 Flying Training School made a plea to consider the training system as a whole, from STEM engagement of young people, right through to the front-line combat ready pilots. He asked that more importance should be placed to the ‘why’ or defining what is actually needed. Is trained fighter pilot produced by the training system expected to be just be a wingman or should they be able to plan and lead a four ship? Arbitrary targets too, such as live/synthetic mixes may have negative effects – with Caine describing how dropping synthetic sessions from a Typhoon 2 v 1 air combat phase actually sped up the training, as the unreliable and in-use simulators had stretched what should have been phase lasting days into weeks. This he said meant that the training pipeline was always constrained by the speed of its slowest part.

Finally, the summit heard that while basic fighter fundamentals (BFF) may have remained static for decades, today they are changing thanks to fifth gen platforms and thus training needs to reflect that. Today’s fighter pilot, for example, needs to understand and interpret complex information – such as a complex and cluttered SAR radar display in an F-35 – perhaps far more than the ability to fly in close formation with a wingman that in real operations, they might never see the entire mission after take-off.

In wider simulation and modelling, the conference also heard from Jason Jones, Defense Program Manager, Matrix Games on how the professional version of consumer PC wargame Command Modern Operations is now becoming a valuable research tool in evaluating future scenarios, platforms and force mixes by government, industry and militaries. He revealed how a DARPA project, the aptly named Gamebreaker, run by Northrop Grumman is pairing Command PE with powerful AI to run thousands if not millions of iterations to find the correct force mix and win most efficiently. In this test, he said AI explored '200 quadrillion game states'. It is thus ironic, that Matrix Games, a tiny UK video game company in Epsom, could be helping define the future combat air mix thanks to its battlespace simulator.

The ’dangerous decade’ and procurement

Air Cdre Jez Holmes, Head, Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO), RAF outlined the principles of data and information warfare for sixth generation platorms. (Tim Robinson/RAes)

The potential threat posed by China was highlighted by many speakers at the summit, not least Air Cdr J Blythe Crawford, Commandant ASC, Air & Space Warfare Centre. “The changing character of conflict is such that we are now in what many have described as the dangerous decade,” Crawford began by saying. “Theorists have long wondered what we would do after the unipolar world that we've lived in for the last 15-20 years had evolved into something else. We've seen lots of actions from other state actors and competitors such as China and Russia, collaborating to try and push us back towards a multipolar world.”

He went on to emphasise that the mere character of past conflicts was traditionally confined to the air, land and maritime spheres, whereas we have now started to move into space and cyber domains. “These were already mature environments thanks to commercial entities” he explained, “but we [the military] are not in the same league in terms of innovation and capability development compared to our civil counterparts. They are moving much faster than we are and continue to accelerate away from us.”

Crawford also questioned how measure military capability in the modern world, saying “If you look at Ukraine's military capabilities, particularly in space, cyber and information ops, I would argue that almost 30% of its abilities are provided by the civilian sector.”

“They are using Starlink for communications, Anonymous is conducting offensive cyber operations on their behalf, and they are even using Twitter for the geolocation of targets and crowdsourcing data online.”

Meanwhile, he cautioned those who automatically assume that organisations like Starlink and Anonymous would take the side of the UK military in time of need. “What happens if we end up in a conflict of choice rather than one of necessity?” he asked. “Some of those entities may not agree with our moral imperative and may decide to either remain neutral or even commit to the side of the opposition.”

Crawford was also critical of traditional procurement models, which he described as “incredibly slow and strategy driven. You tend to begin developing a capability that eventually reaches IOC in an environment that it was never designed for. We have to run just to stand still, and if you want to go somewhere else, you've got to run even faster. Whereas the defence industry stands back and thinks about how we're going to do something, the world and the pace of change are accelerating away from us on a day to day basis.”

The view from SMEs

The balance between high-end and low-cost platforms was another theme. (Tim Robinson/RAeS)

Further criticism of procurement models was voiced by Andrew Kinniburgh - Director-General, Make UK Defence in a very passionate presentation on behalf of the SME and midsize companies that his organisation represents.

Make UK is the national voice of manufacturers in the UK and sits alongside the CBI, the Institute of Directors, the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chambers of Commerce on various government groups.

“SMEs do not have a voice within the defence industry,” Kinniburgh told an audience that included representatives from the MoD and all major prime manufacturers. “The key message I want to get across is one of simplification. One of the enemies of the SME community is the complexity of the defence industry and today I would like to introduce a new three letter acronym: SUA. It stands for ‘stop using acronyms’! They bamboozle everybody, it's not helping if it just makes business more complex.”

Kinniburgh also highlighted problems obtaining payment from primes. “The MoD is probably the best payer in the UK” he explained, it pays between 8 and 10 days after invoice, which is exceptional. However, when we surveyed our SME members 32% of them have a 30 day payment terms, 47% are on 60 days, 16% are at 90 days payment terms and unbelievably 6% are at 120 days or more. There is no excuse for anyone in the defence supply chain to take longer than 30 days to pay. We also looked at the late payments and 40% of our members reported that they often had late payments – some saying this happened 75% of the time.”

He also discussed some of the unreasonable terms and conditions that SMEs have been forced to sign up to in the defence sector, citing programme where the [unnamed] primes refuse to accept finished goods until they have been paid by the MoD – something Kinniburgh described as “outrageous”.

“We've got members with a million pounds worth of goods on their shelves, that they can't ship them because the prime won't accept them. These are big global defence companies with deep pockets but because they have yet to receive payment from the MoD they pass that straight down to a small company that then can't pay its wage bill for the month.”

Kinniburgh also highlighted instances where companies had used environmental social governance (ESG) issues as reasons to cease trading with SMEs involved in the defence sector. “We've got members who are having bank accounts withdrawn by banks when they realise they were in the defence industry, companies refusing to offer insurance and even a company that can't lease cars because they're in the defence sector” he revealed.

He also criticised the UK government for failing to focus on ‘buying British’. “We seem to be the only major defence exporting nation with a voluntary industrial participation and offset code” he suggested. “It's insane that an overseas prime can win an order by saying the programme will have X% of UK content but nobody checks and it's self-reporting.”

Kinniburgh also called into question the government’s claim that the UK is the second largest defence exporter in the world. “According to the Stockholm Peace Institute, the UK is seventh in the global Top 10 of defence exports,” he claimed. “Moreover, between 2017 to 2021 exports have declined by 40% and the UK’s market share now sits at just 2.9%. The fact that government officials are now telling us that we're the second largest exporter ‘on a 10 year rolling average’ is derisible. We're kidding ourselves – and if we keep kidding ourselves, we're going to keep declining because nobody's going to grasp the problem and actually understand that we've got an unbelievably capable industry in the UK, but we're not supporting it properly.”

“Meanwhile, UK defence imports have gone up by 74% between 2017 and 2021. Every FMS contract that is signed hollows out another few businesses in the UK, potentially putting SMEs out of business because their supply chain disappears. UK manufacturing currently accounts for about 11% of our GDP – but if we move that to 15% we would add £142bn to our economy. Yet manufacturing and defence manufacturing in particular have an image problem. We have got to educate teachers, parents and careers advisors as to what amazing capabilities we have in the UK and that we do still make things here!”

AI – is Skynet here already?

Could an AI-enabled UCAV turn on its creators to accomplish its mission? (USAF)

As might be expected artificial intelligence (AI) and its exponential growth was a major theme at the conference, from secure data clouds, to quantum computing and ChatGPT. However, perhaps one of the most fascinating presentations came from Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the Chief of AI Test and Operations, USAF, who provided an insight into the benefits and hazards in more autonomous weapon systems. Having been involved in the development of the life-saving Auto-GCAS system for F-16s (which, he noted, was resisted by pilots as it took over control of the aircraft) Hamilton is now involved in cutting-edge flight test of autonomous systems, including robot F-16s that are able to dogfight. However, he cautioned against relying too much on AI noting how easy it is to trick and deceive. It also creates highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal.

He notes that one simulated test saw an AI-enabled drone tasked with a SEAD mission to identify and destroy SAM sites, with the final go/no go given by the human. However, having been ‘reinforced’ in training that destruction of the SAM was the preferred option, the AI then decided that ‘no-go’ decisions from the human were interfering with its higher mission – killing SAMs – and then attacked the operator in the simulation. Said Hamilton: “We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realising that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”

He went on: “We trained the system – ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that’. So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”

This example, seemingly plucked from a science fiction thriller, mean that: “You can't have a conversation about artificial intelligence, intelligence, machine learning, autonomy if you're not going to talk about ethics and AI” said Hamilton.

On a similar note, science fiction’s – or ‘speculative fiction’ was also the subject of a presentation by Lt Col Matthew Brown, USAF, an exchange officer in the RAF CAS Air Staff Strategy who has been working on a series of vignettes using stories of future operational scenarios to inform decisionmakers and raise questions about the use of technology. The series ‘Stories from the Future’ uses fiction to highlight air and space power concepts that need consideration, whether they are AI, drones or human machine teaming. A graphic novel is set to be released this summer.

Deterrence – thinking the unthinkable

Making for a multidomain conference were speakers from land, air, sea and space services, including Dr Kevin Rowlands, Head Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre. (Tim Robinson/RAeS)

Another sobering presentation was from Prof Wyn Bowen, Co-Director at the Freeman Air and Space Institute, Kings College London, who explained that since the invasion of Ukraine, nuclear war and deterrence was back on the agenda – thanks to Putin’s warnings of escalation. He noted that the ‘two peer’ issue of deterring both China and Russia created new complexities and challenges for the US and its allies.

Most ominously, Bowen said he believed that any attempt by Ukraine to recapture Crimea could be the trigger for Russia to cross the threshold with tactical nuclear weapons. This he thought, would not involve any ‘warning shots’ to send messages, and could involve perhaps two or three nuclear weapons aimed at military targets – potentially even outside Ukraine at supply hubs and training centres for Ukrainian forces in NATO countries. Attacked directly by Russia with nuclear weapons, NATO would then have to consider how to respond to these strikes - a critical test for the alliance.

Hypersonics – hype or threat?

Reaction Engines Concept V hypersonic demonstrator was revealed at last years Farnborough Air Show. (Reaction Engines)

Reaction Engines, was represented by CEO Mark Thomas, who discussed air launched ballistic missiles such as those being used by Russia in Ukraine and the next generation efforts to develop freely manoeuvrable missiles. “There is a lot of focus on those systems because of the amount of papers on the subject coming from China, where the pace and scale of development is truly alarming” revealed Thomas. “We're not just talking about twice or three times as much development - estimates ranging from 50 to 100 times more hypersonic testing being undertaken in China compared to the US - so that is something we have to respond to.”

Assessment of Chinese and Russian hypersonic capabilities was also the theme of a presentation by Dr Malcolm Claus, who noted that there was now a global race in this technology, with projects not just in the US, China and Russia, but also India, Japan and Australia. Reaction Engines itself is working on a UK hypersonic demonstrator programme, HVX, with conjunction with partners Rolls-Royce, RCO, DSTL and the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) to accelerate British knowledge and experience.

Summary

Over 200 delegates attended FCAS23. (Stephen Bridgewater/RAeS)

This then was a landmark RAeS conference in its scale and scope – bringing together a wide variety of speakers and delegates for two days of high-level, intensive, and thought-provoking discussion and debate on the future shape and direction of combat air and space. As noted earlier, with almost 70 speakers this can only be a snapshot of the wide variety of topics that were discussed – but the good news is the RAeS Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit will return in 2024.

Tim Robinson FRAeS and Stephen Bridgewater