In coming decades, unmanned aerial vehicles will dominate the Army’s aviation fleet, officials said.
“The rapid advancement in aviation technology in the past eight years is reminiscent of the aviation boom during World War II,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli said in a speech at an aviation conference in Fort Worth, Texas. “Unmanned systems must provide the capability not only to see, but to shape, the battlefield.”
To boost the capabilities of unmanned aircraft, the Army identified three key areas where improved technology is needed: interoperability, sense-and-avoid devices and sensors that measure equipment deterioration.
The first technology gap, interoperability, applies to virtually all areas of UAV command and control. Army leaders want to be able to fly UAVs from the cockpits of piloted aircraft, and they want ground stations that are compatible with more than one type of aircraft.
“We envision interoperable ground control stations where one operator can control multiple UAVs at the same time,” said Col. Christopher B. Carlile, director of the Army’s UAV Center of Excellence. He predicted that 20 years from now, three out of four attack missions will be unmanned.
Already, Army engineers are installing devices in aircraft such as Apache attack helicopters and Chinook heavy lift helicopters that allow pilots to communicate with, and in some cases control, UAVs. Officials tout the concept of “manned-unmanned teaming.”
Boeing recently introduced an interoperability tool, called the advanced tactical network system, for the Chinook and other aircraft. The network allows pilots and ground crews to view video feeds simultaneously.
In the past, such feeds have only transferred data point-to-point, meaning the information is sent directly from one aircraft to another, or from one aircraft to a ground crew. Boeing’s device allows all parties to view the streams at the same time.
“You have the ability to tap into things you hadn’t been able to tap into before,” said Tom Dubois, a senior rotorcraft engineer at Boeing. “It pulls lots of different information and shares it with everybody on the network.”
The system allows for instant messaging and has a GPS tracking device that can pinpoint users on a map. The network is encrypted to prevent enemies from viewing the streams, Dubois said.
Chiarelli said networks be a centerpiece of Army modernization and a major feature of unmanned systems. Soldiers at every level, using any type of computer need to be able to access UAV surveillance feeds, officials said.
The second gap, sense-and-avoid technology, will be vital to the Army’s plan to expand its unmanned fleet. The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates domestic airspace, has levied tight restrictions on how and when unmanned aircraft can fly in U.S. airspace. Acquiring a permit to fly UAVs in domestic airspace can take up to 60 days. The administration has said it will ease the rules when UAVs have demonstrated that they can be trusted to fly with no risk of colliding with other aircraft.
UAVs need, among other things, sense-and-avoid devices that would detect other aircraft and prevent crashes, the administration has said.
Several Army officials said meeting the FAA’s requirements is the greatest challenge for the service’s aviation fleet. “We need access to the national airspace,” said Lt. Col. James J. Cutting, chief of the unmanned aerial systems division at the Army headquarters aviation directorate. “We don’t have a clear strategy forward on that front. It will probably involve increased simulation training.”
When the Army starts returning home from current deployments, UAVs will need somewhere to fly.
“We will be bringing these vehicles back,” Maj. Gen Jeffrey J. Schoelesser, director of Army aviation in the office of the deputy chief of staff, said at an industry conference in Washington, D.C. “And [we’ll be] training over your homes and in your cities, so we better be ready.”
The Army’s “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap,” which was released in April, says a possible solution is ground-based detection systems that would alert UAVs of nearby aircraft. Army engineers are trying to develop algorithms that would allow UAVs to autonomously steer clear of other objects, once they’re identified from the ground.
In one situation, UAVs would maneuver vertically to avoid collisions. But, the roadmap says, “Simulations have found the automated maneuver worsens the situation in a fraction of scenarios.”
Col. Gregory Gonzalez, project manager for unmanned aircraft systems, suggested that if ground sensors detect nearby aircraft, the UAVs could be programmed to land immediately. “Then you let the threat go though and take the aircraft back up,” Gonzalez said. “This would allow us to fly without a chase, without an observer and at night. And then we can build upon that capability.”
Some companies also have been testing sense-and-avoid systems that would be attached to UAVs. The Maryland-based defense contractor AAI Corp., for example, has been developing cameras that could be embedded in the wings of Shadow UAVs. The cameras use polarized light to identify objects.
The third technology gap, sensors that measure the performance of aircraft components and subsystems, is central to the Army’s efforts to switch all aircraft from time-based to condition-based maintenance schedules. This has been shown to reduce costs, keep aircraft in the skies longer and improve readiness.
As the Army builds up its unmanned fleet, condition-based maintenance will be an important part of its plan to better care for aircraft, both manned and unmanned, officials said.
Nearly half of all Army aircraft now have sensors that measure vibration and other signs of deterioration, and the Army plans to equip all aircraft with such sensors by 2017. The sensors often alert maintenance crews to problems long before they would have been discovered through scheduled inspections.
Today’s sensors can notify maintainers of problems 25 to 50 flight hours before they cause equipment failures, said Christopher Smith, director for condition-based maintenance.
He said technological advancements will allow the Army to measure more deterioration indicators and to analyze them more accurately. He also said the Army needs improved methods for determining an aircraft’s baseline, or how it should look when it’s healthy.
“We want instruments on board that are like a running inspection of the aircraft,” he said. “This will allow us to fix components at a time and place that’s convenient for us. … It eliminates almost all the unscheduled maintenance events that occur.”
The ultimate goal is to notice problems before they lead to in-flight component failures. Aircraft on condition-based maintenance schedules have shown a 5 to 8 percent increase in availability and a 10 percent increase in the hours they’re able to fly, Smith said.
Smith added that condition-based maintenance is not limited to aircraft and that he expects tanks, communications systems and other equipment soon will make the transition.
“Any maintenance officer is happy to see more of what is going on with his equipment,” said Chief Warrant Officer Arthur Gribesk, aviation maintenance officer for the program executive office for aviation. “It’s another tool.”