Maritime Unmanned. From Global Hawk to Triton. By Ernest Snowden and Robert F Wood Jr. Published by the Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2021. ISBN 978-1-68247-700-7
Reviewed by David Hobbs
Ernest Snowden is an Annapolis graduate and former naval aviator who spent time as an air engineering specialist in the USNR after concluding his full-time flying career. When he left the Navy, he became the business manager for maintenance policy in the Naval Air Systems Command and then staff assistant to the deputy director of research and engineering in the office of the Secretary of Defence.
After that he worked for a succession of aerospace and defence firms in positions that dealt with marketing and strategy. Robert F Wood Jr is also a retired naval aviator, in his case a veteran of the Gulf War with 4,000 hours and 750 deck landings in his log book. He commanded an F/A-18 Hornet squadron before joining the Directorate of Air Warfare within the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV N88) as the F/A-18 Requirements Officer. After retirement from the USN he followed a career as a senior executive in the aerospace and defence industry for twenty-three years. Both authors played key roles in formulating the strategy developed by Northrop Grumman to compete, and ultimately succeed, in the competition to provide the USN with an unmanned, long-endurance maritime reconnaissance aircraft. The book is slightly unusual in that the authors write in the third person as outsiders looking into the project at its various stages.
Maritime Unmanned is the story of the project teams that led the metamorphosis by Northrop Grumman that changed the USAF RQ-4A Global Hawk into the MQ-4C Triton, an unmanned air vehicle with different sensors that was procured by the USN to meet its concept of a broad area maritime surveillance aircraft, BAMS. Since the MQ-4C has also been procured by the RAAF to operate alongside the P-8A Poseidon as part of the AP-3C force replacement this book is of particular interest to Australian readers. It is not, however, a technical history; it does not describe the aircraft and the development of its systems in any great detail but does describe how the BAMS project evolved and how Northrop Grumman fought to get its contender accepted for the role. The authors describe how opposition to it came from many quarters, not least from the entrenched opposition to an unmanned solution from aircrew in the USN maritime patrol community and the staff officers responsible for their warfare discipline. Divisions within the firm itself between the former Northrop employees based in California and the former Grumman employees in New York also played a part with some very basic cultural differences. For instance the question of whether former Grumman workers would still get the turkey the firm had given them every Christmas was an issue that I had certainly not expected. The USAF-oriented Global Hawk design team within the recently acquired Ryan Aeronautical Company were not comfortable with the various changes the USN-orientated design team at the former Grumman design office wanted to make to their original design in order to make BAMS viable.
Above all, however, this is a book about the US procurement system as it exists today. It explains how any firm that hopes to succeed in gaining a multi-billion dollar defence project that may fundamentally effect its future must plan every step with care and precision. Senators, representatives, retired flag officers, the firm’s own people and many other groups have to be carefully briefed at every available opportunity, brought on side and kept in the picture as the project progresses. Past procurement shortcomings have to be addressed and corrected and the firm’s management board has to be fully ready to commit its own money and the most dynamic leadership available to the project. This is where the two authors with their intimate knowledge of naval aviation and the provision of the best systems to make it work played such a valuable part. This was the most ambitious project to make use of an unmanned air vehicle for such an important role, let alone one that would operate for considerable periods thousands of miles away from the operations room to which its data would be downloaded. No-one had ever tried to share data from a patrolling unmanned air vehicle with a manned aircraft that would derive targeting information from it and there were more than a few sceptics who warned that it could not be done. The bottom line, however, was that the USN could not afford to recapitalise its P-3C fleet on a one-for-one basis and the mix of P-8A Poseidon manned aircraft and cheaper MQ-4C Tritons on extended open-ocean patrols was the only answer. This is the same argument that led the Australian Defence Force to choose the same partnership of manned and unmanned air vehicles.
As the project continued there were successes and setbacks, both of are described in detail, not least the decision by Lockheed Martin to contest the eventual award of the contract to Northrop Grumman. The description of the firm’s counter-protest action plan is fascinating and gives further insight into the realities of American defence procurement.
Overall this is a well-written account of a major defence contract that has considerable resonance for Australian readers who will see RAAF Tritons in operational service for many years to come. The MQ-4C took a long time to evolve and has still not yet achieved full operational capability; Maritime Unmanned explains how it was selected and I thoroughly recommend it.
