US Navy Presents: Autonomous Squadron

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The US Navy will stand up its first unmanned-only aviation squadron in the coming weeks in a formal ceremony, the Navy’s director of air warfare, Rear Adm. DeWolfe Miller, told USNI News.

Unmanned Patrol Squadron will operate out of Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Fla. and will begin a long process of preparing for early operational capability and a first deployment in 2018.

The squadron has no air vehicles for now; it will receive its first vehicles in late 2017. In the mean time, the approximately 130 squadron members have already begun training with test pilots

In addition to training, the VUP-19 crew will be tasked with collaborating with P-8 operators to develop tactics, techniques and procedures for operating the two maritime patrol/reconnaissance aircraft. Miller said the UAV operators will have a good head start thanks to experience in the field and an understanding of what capability the MQ-4C Triton brings to the fleet. “We know the strengths of each of the platforms so we’ll know when to use them”.

While VUP-19 will have the freedom to write the guidelines as it sees fit, Miller noted that MQ-4C Triton’s predecessor has been operating in for years, with the same maritime patrol/reconnaissance community gathering lessons learned along the way.

“We’ve learned a lot and that’s why we’re excited, because we know what it has contributed as far as maritime awareness during operations. So this will incorporate many more sensors and the information that it will be able to provide to decision-makers will be far superior,” he said.

Miller added the Navy had set this fielding effort up for success with a slow crawl/walk/run approach. By the time early operational capability rolls around in 2018, the squadron will be flying the air vehicles in and around Guam, an isolated island which belongs to the US. The operators themselves will remain in Jacksonville at a vehicle control and information processing center, and a small detachment of maintainers will deploy forward to keep the air vehicles up and running.

Millier concluded: “It’s just exciting: we talk about man-machine teaming, we talk about our unmanned vehicles, and now here’s a milestone event where we’re standing up a squadron and it’s becoming a reality,” he said.