With both next-generation aircraft tasked with carrying out “global persistent attack” missions -- coupled with ever-tightening defense budgets -- Air Force officials plan to study whether developing a common baseline airframe is feasible, Lt. Col. Steven Knutson, Air Force Special Operations Command's test, technology and experimentation division chief, told ITAF April 3.

The initial capabilities document for AFSOC's AC-130 gunship replacement has been designated a “foundation document” for the analysis of alternatives ACC is conducting on the military's future long-range bomber, he said.

Prior to the release of the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review in February, the Office of the Secretary of Defense told U.S. Special Operations Command its “numbers for a gunship are so small that you need to look at the possibility of joining up with ACC and using [the] platform” the Langley, VA-based command will eventually pursue for the new bomber, Knutson said.

If Air Force and Pentagon officials eventually opt to use the same aircraft and modify them into bombing and gunship variants, the two platforms would have some similarities, but “not all the sensors and the munitions” would be used on both, Knutson told ITAF. Air Force officials are merely studying whether they could build a new gunship out of “the basic platform that ACC is going to develop,” he added.

ITAF reported earlier this year that the Pentagon, as part of the QDR, had opted to terminate the Air Force's portion of the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) program (ITAF, Jan. 13, p1). Meanwhile, the Navy is moving forward with its part of the program.

Air Force and Defense Department officials have said the air service would not merely sweep its J-UCAS involvement under the rug. Blue-suited officials say they plan to rely heavily on lessons gleaned from the service's J-UCAS work as they begin developing a new long-range strike concept. Service officials also have said they are mulling whether the embryonic program ultimately will field a family of bombing aircraft or merely a single plane and they have expressed resounding interest in the possibility of developing an unmanned bomber. The QDR directs the Air Force to field a new bomber by 2018.

To that end, service officials expect to launch a broad study this year that will articulate a list of requirements for a next-generation long-range strike program. The review will be the service's first try at transitioning technical lessons taken from its J-UCAS work into the new bombing program ( ITAF, Feb. 10, p1).

Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne recently testified that the Pentagon's next six-year spending plan will spell out the service's desire to get a first-hand glimpse of the platforms that eventually will square off to become its new long-range bombing aircraft (ITAF, May 1, p1). That first-hand look likely will come in the form of a fly-off.

Meanwhile, ACC is in the nascent stages of the bomber analysis of alternatives, Lt. Col. James Pillar, ACC's chief for next-generation long-range strike, told ITAF in am April 11 e-mail. He noted that while an AOA of this magnitude normally would take two years, ACC officials want to shorten that time line. They think a shorter process is possible because of a “proliferation of data” from previous long-range strike studies, coupled with information gathered by industry and service labs focused on developmental and existing platforms, weapon system improvements and other related concepts, Pillar said.

One example is AFSOC's AC-130 replacement initial capabilities document. In addition to that document, the military's “Joint Strike Enable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle” ICD also has been dubbed a foundation document for the bomber AOA, Pillar said. Other documents that likely will contribute to the long-range strike analysis are: the “Global Strike and Global Persistent Attack Concept of Operations” and the “Global Strike Joint Capabilities Document.”

There also have been numerous studies since “early 1995 related to long-range strike conducted by the Air Force, [Institute for Defense Analyses], the RAND Corp.'s Project Air Force and, most recently, the Congressional Budget Office,” Pillar noted. “These are used as reference material and points of departure for further analysis.”

However, since OSD has yet to formally green-light the AOA, a delay in its completion is likely, Pillar said. That had been slated for the first quarter of fiscal year 2007, he told ITAF, adding the likely delay also will push back subsequent long-range bomber work. Those efforts were initially set for the second quarter of next fiscal year.

Once completed, ACC will brief the Air Force Requirements for Operational Capability Council and could eventually merge the programs as a “budgeting decision,” according to Knutson.

He said those working on the bomber AOA were given two missions that the future platform must be able to perform: global strike and global persistent attack, which long has been the primary mission of AFSOC's gunship.

AFSOC's gunships “are one of the premier platforms to do that because we can find, fix and finish the targets,” Knutson said. “We're working hand-in-hand on that global persistent attack mission with ACC on what we think ACC needs to go to on their sensor suite, and the munitions that they need to have.”

The testing division chief continued that “if there's not the commonality between the platforms and the budget constraints force us to, we can't have a gunship of the future.”

If that scenario plays out, “ACC, the Marine Corps and the Navy -- with their different platforms -- will have to pick up that mission of close air support for troops . . . that AFSOC would normally perform.”

Knutson said the Air Force might develop two variants of the potential bomber-gunship aircraft. “There might be one that's a lot faster,” and another that is “slower because with persistence you need to have a little longer loiter time.” The latter would be a requirement for the gunship, which would need to travel at slower speed to gun down targets on the ground.

Still, “I think there will be a lot of commonality between these two platforms,” he said, adding a handful of AFSOC personnel are assisting ACC's long-range strike program office with the bomber AOA.

Air Force leadership directed the start of a “Next-Generation Gunship” AOA several years ago. Even though the AC-130 has seen extensive action in the global war on terrorism, its Employment in threat environments has become increasingly limited. The specialized close air support aircraft is not well-suited to defend itself against ground-based and aerial threats, and has had to operate at growing distances from combat action, according to service officials.

The service previously hoped to field a gunship replacement around 2015 due to future threats over the next 10 to 20 years could preclude AC-130 use in many regions.

However, after the OSD directive that incorporated the AFSOC study into ACC's research, the plan changed for the new gunship to lag two years behind the future bomber. Therefore, when that aircraft reaches initial operating capability in 2018, the Next-Generation Gunship likely will reach that same benchmark in 2020, according to Knutson.

In the meantime, “there's spirals and modifications to the B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s along with F-16s, [Joint Strike Fighter] and F-22As that will help us out to give our ground forces the support they need,” the testing chief noted.

The RAND-conducted gunship AOA, which wrapped up in 2003, set forth a gamut of “enabling technologies,” with the biggest being making the follow-on aircraft unmanned, Knutson stated. Senior Air Force officials have said the next-generation bomber also could be unmanned.

Before reaching that benchmark, AFSOC officials want to determine if gunship crews can remotely control an unmanned aerial vehicle's sensor ball.

“First we're just trying to control it from the gunship and how we would employ that because that's new to us,” Knutson told ITAF. From there, officials will determine whether or not they can launch and recover a UAV from the gunship. The final step, according to Knutson, would be for the gunship itself to be unmanned and capable of launching and recovering other, smaller UAVs.

Officials are looking for technologies “both in munitions and the sensors, along with the [Global Information Grid] of the future and how are we going to take those pictures from an off-board sensor and put them on current gunship and then whenever the next platform for the future,” Knutson stated.

The 2003 AOA also directed AFSOC to explore placing a variety of munitions on the replacement gunship, including directed-energy weapons, Knutson said. He noted that while SOCOM is the lead on the Advanced Tactical Laser technology demonstration effort, that system takes up the entire cargo bay of a C-130 airlifter.

“Technology really needs to miniaturize laser capability or directed energy, whether it's a microwave or a laser, to where we can actually employ it from greater standoff” distances on the Next-Generation Gunship, Knutson told ITAF. He added AFSOC is currently performing experiments in conjunction with the Air Force Research Laboratory's directed energy directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, NM, to explore ways of shrinking the technology.

Another munition the RAND study asked the service to look at is putting a new kind of weapon, dubbed a “very small munition” (VSM), on the new gunship, according to Knutson. “We're looking at something probably in the 50-inch [length], with a 10-pound warhead capability that could reach reach the distances we're looking at,” he said, adding the study's parameters called for the munition to go 15 nautical miles in 65 seconds.

Another requirement for the VSM is it should be two-thirds the size of a Hellfire missile, Knutson said.

The existing H-model gunships are equipped with both a 40 mm and 105 mm cannon and a 25 mm gun, according to an Air Force fact sheet. The U-models lack the 25 mm gun. Both models have their weapons mounted on the left side of the plane.

For the new gunship, “105 [mm cannon] is not going to be the munition we'll be shooting” on the new model, AFSOC's testing chief said. His command is exploring options that would allow the VSM to be fired off the top, bottom, or both sides of the follow-on aircraft, he stated.

The next-generation munition would be dispensed via a “Coke machine-type rack,” according to Knutson. “You [would] have an internal rack -- in order to make it low-observable -- and in that Coke machine rack you could have a VSM that is for personnel, [or] you could have a VSM [tailored to take out] buildings,” he said. “You would, just like a Coke machine, select which one of the munitions with which characteristics that you want for the targets that you're going after.”

That system is currently under development, Knutson added.

AFSOC has 13 U-model gunships, with four more on the way, and eight H-models, according to the test division chief. Command officials envision having some number of the existing models around for future missions, as well as fleet of the AC-130 replacements that he said likely would number “between 24 and 30, initially.”