A U.S. Marine stretched a 20-foot bungee cord as far as it would
go and released it, launching a 4-pound Dragon Eye unmanned reconnaissance
aircraft. Instead of taking to the air, however, the tiny plane—which
fits into a backpack—flew straight into the grass.
Unfazed, the Marine simply dusted off the Dragon Eye, and the team
launched it again. This time, the tiny aircraft soared up, into
the sky, and performed as expected, circling the field, filming
and transmitting live video images to a large screen on the ground
below.
“One advantage of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) is that
you can have a rough landing and not damage it,” Marine Maj.
John Cane, from the Marine Warfighting Laboratory, based in Quantico,
Va., told an estimated 2,000 spectators at a UAV demonstration in
Southern Maryland.
The demonstration featured flights by nine widely different UAVs
from all over the United States and as far away as Austria and Japan.
They ranged from the hand-launched Dragon Eye, to the 49 foot-wingspanned
Predator, to the helicopter-like Camcopter.
The demonstration was conducted earlier this summer at Patuxent
Naval Air Station’s Webster Field Annex. Webster Field is
the headquarters of Fleet Composite Squadron Six Unmanned Air Vehicle
Detachment (VC-6 UAV Det), the Navy’s only UAV command. The
demonstration was co-sponsored by the U.S. Navy and the Association
of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), of Arlington,
Va.
Manufacturers were eager to show off their products, hoping to
take advantage of the Bush administration’s undisguised enthusiasm
for unmanned systems. “In my judgment,” said Navy Secretary
Gordon England at an AUVSI symposium in Baltimore, “unmanned
systems have the same transformational potential as space.
“We already have unmanned systems typically doing the dull,
dirty and dangerous activities that humans shun or are unable to
perform, and they have generally performed well in these roles.”
It is “critical” to move such promising technology
as rapidly as possible from research and development to the operational
stage, according to Edward C. (Pete) Aldridge Jr., undersecretary
of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. One mechanism
that has proven successful at taking matured technologies into the
field in prototype systems is the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration,
or ACTD, he said during a recent congressional budget hearing. Aldridge
had particular praise for two products of the ACTD program, the
Predator and Global Hawk UAVs.
The Predator is an unmanned surveillance aircraft built by General
Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., of San Diego. Conceived in 1994,
it was sent to Southwest Asia within a year to acquire and disseminate
video imagery to U.S. forces and their coalition partners. Since
then, the Predator has been deployed seven times, including five
trips to the Balkans, said General Atomics spokesperson Cyndi Wegerbauer.
During those assignments, it has accrued more than 24,000 flight
hours.
This spring, the U.S. Air Force Aeronautical Systems Center at
Wright Patterson Air Force Base, in Ohio, agreed to buy seven Predators
for $39 million and retained options for seven additional aircraft.
This brings the total number of Predators to 79 organized in two
Air Force squadrons, according to Wegerbauer.
Originally employed as a reconnaissance aircraft, the Predator
is configured with a combination of sensors, ranging from electro-optical,
infrared cameras to laser target designators. This winter, a Predator
successfully launched a “live” Hellfire-C, laser-guided
missile that struck and heavily damaged a stationary, unmanned Army
tank on the ground at an airfield near Nellis Air Force Base, in
Nevada.
Thus, Predators could be used as unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs),
replacing traditional fighters and bombers for some missions. Efforts
to develop a fleet of UCAVs are picking up speed (See related story).
The Defense Department, meanwhile, is accelerating development
of the Air Force’s Global Hawk. In its fiscal year 2002 budget
request to Congress, the department proposed to more than double
spending for Global Hawk, from $143 million in 2001 to $307 million
in 2002. This increase will permit the purchase of two of the aircraft
from the manufacturer, Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp.
The Air Force plans to buy two each year through 2008 and four
per year after that, said Brig. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, director
of the service’s information dominance programs. Ultimately,
he said, the service plans a fleet of 63 Global Hawks.
“The U-2 size, endurance and range of this vehicle is truly
remarkable,” Obering told the Baltimore conference. Global
Hawk can “stand off Manhattan, image the whole island and
actually count the people,” Obering explained.
With a wingspan of 116 feet—comparable to that of a Boeing
737 airliner—Global Hawk has endurance, Obering said. In recent
flights, Global Hawks flew non-stop across both the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans. In 2000, one made its way from Eglin Air Force Base,
Fla., to Portugal, completed some radar-imagery tasks and returned
to Eglin 28 hours later.
In April of this year, another Global Hawk deployed from Edwards
Air Force Base, Calif., to Australia for a series of maritime patrol
exercises with the Australian air force and navy, in conjunction
with the U.S. Navy. In preparation for the Australian deployment,
the vehicle flew from Edwards to the equator and back, setting world
records for endurance and altitude for autonomous jet-powered UAVs.
The first main operating base for Global Hawk will be Beale Air
Force Base, located north of Sacramento, Calif., the service announced
in July. Beale is home to the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, which flies
the venerable U-2 high-altitude surveillance aircraft.
Locating Global Hawk with the U-2 mission “ensures that cultural
issues associated with transitioning from manned to unmanned reconnaissance
are in the hands of our current strategic reconnaissance experts
at Beale,” said Gen. John P. Jumper, commander of the Air
Combat Command and incoming Air Force chief of staff.
One of the biggest cultural issues, according to Obering: “How
do you maintain that warrior philosophy without a pilot in the cabin?
You’ve got to get people to buy into the increased safety
offered by UAVs.”
Unmanned systems are “an opportunity to use technology in
place of people,” said Lt. Gen. John Riggs, director of the
Army chief of staff’s Objective Force Task Force.
Also, England said, machines can perform better in some situations
than people. For example, he explained, “experience with the
F-16 [fighter] has shown that [an acceleration rate of] 9 g’s
is a practical limit for manned combat aircraft ...” Unmanned
systems face no such limitation, giving them potentially greater
maneuverability, he said.
In addition, industry officials claimed, the crews that operate
most UAVs require much less training than those of manned aircraft.
“We typically train people who are very unfamiliar with flying
aircraft,” said Bob Curtin, vice president of AeroVironment
Inc., of Semi Valley, Calif. “They’re more comfortable
driving tanks or Humvees. But it takes just a few minutes to teach
them to fly.”
Curtin was at the demonstration showing the FQM-151A Pointer reconnaissance
UAV, which his company developed for the Marine Corps. The hand-launched,
20-pound aircraft has been flown by the Marines, Army, Air Force
and law enforcement agencies in Europe, Southwest Asia, Australia
and the United States. Earlier this year, it received export license
approval and has been delivered to the French Armeé de Terre.
Some UAVs demonstrated at Webster Field were capable of vertical
takeoff and landing (VTOL). The circular iSTAR, produced by the
San Diego-based Flight Systems Division of Allied Aerospace Industries
Inc., resembles a floor fan and comes in versions as small as 6
inches in diameter. With its ability to move about like a tiny helicopter,
iSTAR is ideal to perform reconnaissance for small infantry units,
according to the firm’s UAV program manager, Kerry Fishkeller.
The 95-pound Camcopter—produced by a Washington, D.C.-based
subsidiary of Austria’s Schiebel Robotics GmbH—is an
unmanned helicopter. “It’s really simple to use,”
the vehicle’s operator, Michael D, Langness, told National
Defense. “You just tell it where to go. Push a button, and
it takes off on its own. The same with landing.”
Some high-end UAVs require trained pilots at the controls, even
though the controls are on the ground, far away from the vehicles,
cautioned Obering. Unmanned combat systems have weapons that can
do a lot of damage, he said. “They need to be operated by
trained combat pilots. That isn’t going to change any time
soon.”
Without a pilot in the cockpit, however, the relatively slow moving
UAVs are vulnerable both to computer failures and hostile fire.
In late August, for example, a Predator disappeared over southern
Iraq. At press time, U.S. troops hadn’t been able to determine
whether it had been shot down or had simply crashed. Earlier, in
July, the Army reported that two Hunter UAVs had crashed in Kosovo.