Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations (2005) / Chapter Skim
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4 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Capabilities and Potential
4 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Capabilities and Potential
Pages 82-115
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From page 82... ...
More specifically, it is well recognized that these campaigns benefited significantly from the ISR contributions of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
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From page 83... ...
programs. The J-UCAS program is a joint DARPA/Air Force/Navy effort to demonstrate the technical feasibility, military utility, and operational value for weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles to prosecute 21st-century combat missions, including suppression of enemy air defense, surveillance, and precision strike.
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From page 84... ...
2002. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Roadmap 2002-2027, Department of Defense, Washington, D.C., December, p.
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From page 85... ...
2002. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Roadmap 2002-2027, Department of Defense, Washington, D.C., p.
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2002. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Roadmap 2002-2027, Department of Defense, Washington, D.C., December, p.
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2002. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Roadmap 2002-2027, Department of Defense, Washington, D.C., December.
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From page 88... ...
. These concepts are discussed later in the chapter, and in the subsection entitled "Recommendations Concerning Unmanned Aerial Vehicles," the committee addresses Navy and Marine Corps efforts to explore and experiment with some of these new technologies and concepts of operations (CONOPS)
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From page 89... ...
THE POTENTIAL OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES FOR NAVAL OPERATIONS Unmanned aerial vehicles capitalize on many of the advantages that have made manned aircraft so vital to military operations. They operate in a medium that allows easy movement in three dimensions and which is penetrable by a broad variety of sensing and communications techniques.
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From page 90... ...
, by employing a small number of vehicles, these impressive capabilities enable near-continuous surveillance for essentially indefinite periods of time. As demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq, the operational flexibility is further enhanced when both ISR and strike are integrated into one air vehicle such as the Predator.
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From page 91... ...
Distributed Control Although both manned and unmanned air operations can be coordinated among multiple users, the physical removal of the operator from the air vehicle also allows direct control to be shared among multiple users or even Services. The user with the best situation awareness or the most immediate need could assume direct control as needed.
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From page 92... ...
New Operational Capabilities The Navy and Marine Corps need to consider innovative concepts in order to exploit the potential that UAVs offer. This endeavor will involve pursuing advanced development in concept areas such as those discussed below and leveraging the efforts of other military Services, DARPA, and other innovative institutions.
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From page 93... ...
-guided weapons. A logical extension of these lessons learned would be to employ a J-UCAS as a stealthy, forward-deployed, loitering platform in support of ground operations, but under the direct control of the Marine Corps forward air controllers.
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From page 94... ...
There has been extensive work on air-dropped, unattended ground sensors, and some work has been done on miniature, GPS-guided, payload delivery systems. Aerial Release and Redocking for Offboard Sensor Platforms and Other Applications An extension of using UAVs to deploy unattended ground sensors or smaller sensor and attack systems would be to allow the redocking of a smaller air vehicle to the carrier aircraft (either manned or unmanned)
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From page 95... ...
tags to vehicles for subsequent tracking or attack. Optionally Piloted Air Vehicles Optionally piloted air vehicles are designed to be flown by a pilot onboard, to be teleoperated by an operator on the ground, or to fly autonomously.
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Training Whether for manned or unmanned air vehicles, O&S costs are typically driven by peacetime requirements for flight training hours. The DOD's 2002 UAV Roadmap, for example, estimates that 50 to 90 percent of total flying hours
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One reason for such savings, for example, is that UAVs are more automated than manned aircraft are, and the training-hour requirements are correspondingly less. An experienced USAF Predator operator is required to fly 18 training sorties per year to maintain required proficiency, whereas an experienced USAF U-2 pilot is required to fly more than four times as many training sorties.
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From page 98... ...
In the future, however, trends indicate that the commonality approach will change from its current focus on hardware and software to focusing on common and open architectures and combinations of the two. TECHNOLOGY ISSUES AND NEEDS Despite unmanned aerial vehicles' impressive range of capabilities and potential benefits for naval operations, some important capabilities must be addressed if the full potential of these vehicles is to be realized in a timely fashion.
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From page 99... ...
5 is working in conjunction with the DOD, NASA, and the Federal Aviation Administration on UAV-related issues such as certification of UAVs and free access to the national airspace. Contingency Planning One of the most important functions of a manned aircraft pilot is to deal with contingencies, including, when possible, safe recovery of the aircraft from an emergency.
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From page 100... ...
While in principle it is possible to provide a synthetic environment to a ground-based operator, with a level of awareness similar to that of a pilot in the aircraft, this approach is costly, requires substantial and perhaps unsustainable communications bandwidth, and would defeat the long-term goal of having one operator control multiple UAVs. The most desirable approach would be autonomous UAV systems to manage conflict and collision avoidance and to plan flight paths in cooperation with other air vehicles and elements in the operational environment.
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From page 101... ...
7Glen Colby, JPALS Chief Engineer, "UCAV-N, Naval Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle, Carrier Integration Challenges, Automatic/Autonomous Flight Operations," presentation to the committee, April 24, 2003.
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From page 102... ...
UAVs will introduce additional airborne sensor platforms, and persistent UAV platforms will vastly increase the quantity of data available. However, for this data to be useful, they must be interpreted and analyzed, and important components of the data must be forwarded in a useful form to the end users.
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From page 103... ...
Such features have been developed in manned aircraft and would be straightforward to adapt to UAVs. Other Issues Related to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Reliability The history of UAV development includes failed programs that overemphasized low cost at the expense of reliability.
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From page 104... ...
2002. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Roadmap 2002-2027, Department of Defense, Washington, D.C., December.
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From page 105... ...
However, even with UAV experience being relatively immature compared with that of manned aircraft, it has become increasingly clear that the program cost drivers for manned and unmanned aircraft are identical -- requirements and requirement stability. Thus, UAV developers need to continue pursuit of UAVs as a lower-cost alternative.
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From page 106... ...
Navy and Marine Corps Behind Other Military Services in Fielding Modern UAV Systems Despite recent advances, UAVs are still not widely distributed across the military Services or firmly integrated into Service force structures. Also, funding support is at times tenuous.
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From page 107... ...
Past program examples include the Navy/Marine Corps Amber, the Hunter Short-Range UAV, the Mid-Range UAV, and the first joint tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (TUAV) program.
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From page 108... ...
Absent a dramatically increased involvement with UAVs, the Navy and Marine Corps run the risk of falling farther behind, not fully exploiting the benefits offered by Army and Air Force systems, and lagging in efforts to shape the direction that new UAVs systems will take in the future. Importance of Accelerating the Fielding of UAVs The committee found that operational experience with the Predator, Global Hawk, Hunter, and special-purpose UAV systems during recent conflicts demonstrated that, once employed by warfighters, the value of UAVs becomes immediately evident, ideas for new operational concepts are spawned, a constituency is formed, and strong advocacy begins to build.
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From page 109... ...
Ship-Based Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. At present the Navy has no ship-based TUAV capability, and there is no formal acquisition program for
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From page 110... ...
It therefore appears to the committee that the Naval Services will continue to suffer from a serious ISR deficit at least through 2010, during which time the Army and Air Force will continue to develop operational concepts and gain valuable experience that will lead to improved UAV systems in the future. Marine Corps's Views on Its UAV Future.
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From page 111... ...
The Eagle Eye, on the other hand, is a developmental system, and the Coast Guard schedule shows the system reaching initial operating capability late in 2007. Current Marine Corps thinking on what constitutes a suitable VTOL tactical UAV points to a system more closely matching the V-22 Osprey in speed, with range out to 200 nautical miles.
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From page 112... ...
Recommendations Concerning Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Recommendation: The Navy and Marine Corps should aggressively exploit the considerable warfighting benefits offered by autonomous vehicles (AVs) by acquiring operational experience with current systems and using lessons learned from that experience to develop future AV technologies, operational requirements, and systems concepts.
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From page 113... ...
Develop Future Sea-Based Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Requirements. The Navy and Marine Corps should jointly develop requirements for a future seabased tactical UAV system that will meet the needs of the Marine Corps's Shipto-Objective Maneuver concept afloat and ashore and is suitable for employment on a variety of ship types -- the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)
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From page 114... ...
and the Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC) should assign responsibility for the review and revision of the naval UAV Roadmap to establish a clear plan to address advanced technology needs and the timely introduction of new UAV capabilities and to resolve tactical UAV issues between the two Services.
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From page 115... ...
/Air Force/ Navy Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) , the A-160 Hummingbird, Eagle Eye, X-50 Dragonfly canard rotor wing, unmanned combat armed rotorcraft, organic aerial vehicles, and micro-UAVs.
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