FEATURE ARTICLE

April 2005

Unmanned Aircraft ‘Roadmap’ Reflects Changing Priorities

by Joe Pappalardo

The Defense Department is dispensing with the descriptive “unmanned aerial vehicles,” in favor of a new term: unmanned aircraft systems. Officials assert this name change reflects the increasingly complex nature of unmanned-aircraft programs, which not only include airframes, but also ground-control stations, sensor suites and communications devices.

More attention needs to be paid to the technology supporting the air vehicles, said Dyke Weatherington, deputy of the UAS planning task force at the office of the secretary of defense.

The Pentagon’s latest unmanned-systems roadmap, expected to be published this month, will shape future buys and the development of military tactics, he said at a conference sponsored by the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. “This document will have a big significance on the quadrennial defense review we’re about to start.”

Real world lessons are driving requirements, he said. Unmanned vehicles currently in operation in Iraq and Afghanistan were “designed as an ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) system, not for direct targeting support. Yet that’s what we’re doing today,” Weatherington said. “Not all the data is there that the users need.”

Communications have received their own appendix in this roadmap, he said. The need to get real-time information to interested parties at multiple command levels has prompted a requirement for standard interfaces, which permits easier data sharing.

Refinements on older sensors, and using new ones, are included in military plans. A prototype of a high-definition television camera is being built, for use in target identification and tracking. Much of the UAS work is being field tested in Iraq and Afghanistan, Weatherington said. One currently deployed system that shows promise is the Lynx radar that was designed and developed by Sandia National Laboratories for reconnaissance and surveillance in adverse weather conditions.

New technologies must be developed that give a broad area perspective in detail, and in real time, Weatherington said. Advances in collecting signals intelligence will be also explored, he pointed out.

There is also a need to integrate dissimilar sensors to provide the many different players all pertinent battlefield information. “We are finding increasingly that a single sensor looking at a single target may not be able to provide a war fighter all that he needs,” Weatherington said.

There also is a growing interest in survivability. “The enemy now is limited in an air defense capability, but that may not be the case in the future,” he said.

Unmanned aircraft of various sizes, operating at different altitudes, would require unique defenses. Camouflage is the preferred method, with high-fliers tamping down their radar signatures, and craft at lower levels becoming harder to spot and quieter.

Weapons are another topic of discussion. While the topic is not given its own chapter in the roadmap, a variety of armaments are being considered for unmanned air systems, Weatherington said.

Also in the roadmap are appendixes devoted to airships, potential use of UAS by the Department of Homeland Security, and a classified section on the use of unmanned aircraft in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unmanned aircraft programs are enjoying robust funding from the White House. In President Bush’s 2006 request, the budget for unmanned vehicles stands at $1.7 billion, Weatherington noted. Calculating the exact figure, even by those inside the Pentagon, is hampered by the fact that “the services bury some procurements” in other programs. Weatherington added that coming adjustments would likely push the total UAS budget figure higher.

Some high-profile UAS efforts are encountering hurdles, however. The Navy’s broad area maritime surveillance aircraft witnessed a reduction of funding to accompany its design delays.

According to a senior Navy official, the service has decided to postpone the procurement of BAMS both for budgetary reasons and because the sensor requirements remain undefined. Pentagon planners are not pleased by this setback. “There is a hole in 2006 for BAMS. They’re going to try to shift 2005 (funds) to ’06,” Weatherington said. “We worked hard to pull that back.”

Budget documents show that the procurement of BAMS dropped to zero through fiscal year 2009, with four aircraft slated to be bought by 2011. “The Navy wanted to do a competitive acquisition,” said Weatherington. “The department is not happy to see that.”

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