Microjets replicate UAVs during major exercise
August 16, 2024
After decades of asymmetric warfighting in the Middle East, Afghanistan and the Mediterranean and Balkans, the US military is having to prepare for a potential ‘near peer’ fight in the Pacific, in a more contested and congested battlespace, facing an ever wider range of threats. With its ‘in house’ adversary and aggressor capabilities having been allowed to dwindle and decay, and facing constrained budgets, the Department of Defence has had to pursue imaginative and innovative means of simulating and emulating the threat during large-scale exercises. Commercial Red Air has taken up some of the ‘slack’, but has proved expensive, sometimes unrepresentative, and often unable to generate realistic mass. Synthetics and augmented reality are being explored, while some expect unmanned platforms to play an increasingly important role.
Exercise Northern Strike 24 was described by the Air National Guard as the “premier reserve component training event,” and that the exercise was focused on “homeland security and defense against unmanned aerial systems.” The ANG said that it was designed to build readiness with joint and partner forces in all domains of warfare. More than 6,300 personnel from 32 states (and from several international participants) participated.
The exercise was mounted at the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center, part of the National All-Domain Warfighting Center, which has 17,000 square miles of special use airspace over Northern Michigan, attached to the Alpena CRTC. The centre provides training across all five warfighting domains – air, land, maritime, space, and cyber.
During Exercise Northern Strike 24, the US Air Force used two small, homebuilt Sonex Microjets (civilian registration numbers N55KX and N66KX) to simulate cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which have seen increasingly frequent use in the modern battlespace.
The Sonex Aircraft JSX-2 Microjet has an empty weight of just 500 pounds (227 kg), and a maximum speed of 287 miles per hour and its small size, and maneuverability allow it to replicate the behaviour of modern UAVs. It’s low cost (quoted as $136,654) also makes it attractive.
The operator of the two aircraft, KestrelX, was awarded a US $725,053 contract in 2022 for “UAV and cruise missile threat replication aircraft.”
