The thing we’re very serious about, and it hasn’t come
along nearly as fast as I would want it to and I’m disap-
pointed, is the unmanned cargo vehicle [Cargo UAV].
Two or three years ago, when we first really went back
into Afghanistan, one of our companies [was] involved
in a hell of a firefight. This was the middle of summer,
so it was well over 120 degrees outside. Here is this
company commander on the ground late in the after-
noon, and he’s just about out of ammunition and he’s
just about out of water, and there’s been no lightening
up of this enemy force. He called for both water and
ammunition, and the call came back, because it was
going to go in in our heavy-lift helicopters, “You could
have one or the other, but you can’t have both. We can’t
get both to you this afternoon.”
I read that account of that effort and I thought to
myself, “Boy, just think if we had had what I’ve called for
for years — a Cargo UAV sitting ready and you had
maybe 10 of them that could carry 750 pounds.”
[We] get all enthralled and make these things the size
of a blimp and it costs $10 billion dollars. That’s not
what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something not
a lot bigger than the size of this table top that can lift 700
pounds of water and ammunition and I can launch 10 of
them and, if it crashes en route or if the enemy shoots it
down, so what? I’ll just send another one. I could’ve sent
all the ammunition and water those kids needed. I’m not
going to push it out of an airplane 2,000 feet above, out
in the open, and they’re going to scamper out in the
open to find it. I’ve been disappointed in industry’s
agnostic approach to this.
We’ve got two [Cargo UAVs] that we’re looking at
right now — commercial, off-the-shelf. They’re not the
final solution, they’re too big, but they’re ones that were
out there, that we’re modifying. We’re going to bring one
of them into theater this fall. My prediction is that will be
a proof of concept. That will be a shot heard around the
world. I think everybody from special ops [is] going to
want it, I think all the [ground] forces are going to want
it. It could be daylight, dark, rainy and it’s going to fly in
there and deliver the goods. I predict that when this happens, it will take off like a rocket ship.
LISA NIPP
What efforts are under way to reduce the
logistic load of supporting a force deployed in
remote locations?
AMOS: There’s only so much logistics burden you can
lighten in a place like Afghanistan because it’s just such
a harsh environment. Typically, you take a vehicle, a
Humvee, and you buy it for seven years, you expect
when you amortize it you say “this Humvee is going to
last seven years.” I’m not sure we’ve got a single
Humvee in Afghanistan right now. In the height of
[operations] in Iraq, we would wear a Humvee out
well inside of a year. The heat, the dust, just the con-
stant up and down and back and forth, it’s tough.
