Air Force preparing to buy new long-endurance drones for Task Force 99 in Middle East
The Air Force is looking to procure a new unmanned system for Task Force 99, putting a premium on endurance and range.
The unit — which was stood up in October 2022 at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, to use uncrewed platforms to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities and perform technology experiments — has multiple lines of effort including increasing air domain awareness, locating hard-to-detect mobile targets, and creating dilemmas for adversaries, according to officials.
The organization, which falls under Air Forces Central (AFCENT) in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in the Middle East, has been exploring other cutting-edge tools such as AI and 3D printing.
“TF-99 is able to push the limits with autonomous operations and artificial intelligence capabilities, building trust in emerging technologies that are becoming more and more relevant,” Col. Jeffrey Digsby, commander of the unit, said in a June news release. “We are able to rapidly create new capabilities for the warfighter, find novel ways to utilize those technologies in theater, and demonstrate their usefulness to the larger Air Force and Department of Defense.”
The task force has employed a variety of drones since it was established, as the Air Force seeks unmanned aerial systems that are less expensive than high-end platforms like the MQ-9 Reaper to cost-effectively boost its capacity.
“We’ve got either on-order or on-hand now 98 different UASs across 13 types with ranges from 20 kilometers out to 900 miles. They can do a variety of things from ISR to potential uses for attack and things of that nature. So it’s exciting to me to see the department focusing on this. And I think we’ve got a role to play in advancing that technology and kind of looking at the changes of warfare,” Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, then commander of AFCENT, told reporters during a Defense Writers Group meeting last fall.
The Air Force continues to add to that fleet and it recently issued a solicitation for a new drone for the organization. According to a questions-and-answers document published Monday, the “priority order” of importance for “salient characteristic requirements” is endurance, range, affordability, availability, payload, assembly, sustainment/maintenance, ship/storage, and survivability.
The “objective” characteristic requirements for endurance and range are 24 hours and 2,500 kilometers (approximately 1,550 miles), respectively, according to an attachment to the solicitation. By comparison, the MQ-9A Reaper drone — a workhorse during the post-9/11 wars — has a range of about 1,150 miles and an endurance of 27 hours, although an extended-range variant can fly longer and farther, according to fact sheets from the Air Force and manufacturer General Atomics.
Other objective characteristic requirements for the new drone that the Air Force is looking to buy for Task Force 99 include payload volume of 20 liters, payload weight of 10 kilograms, speed of 120 miles per hour, flight ceiling of 18,000 feet, and the ability to fit in a pre-built box that can be loaded on a standard military pallet, among others.
The service also wants a system that uses open-source flight control firmware with mission planner capability; anti-jam, anti-spoof, multi-GNSS GPS; mesh-capable radio that’s frequency agnostic and has full-motion-video stream bandwidth; lidar to assist with auto-landing and takeoff; radar-transparent airframe material; and all-weather durability.
“Threshold” or minimum requirements for the platform include 14 hours of endurance, a 1,260-kilometer range, a speed of 60 miles per hour, and a flight ceiling of 4,000 feet, among others.
The department is looking to purchase five drones categorized as “commercial items/services” as part of this procurement, according to the solicitation.
The deadline for industry responses is Aug. 23.
