The unmanned aircraft can reach a maximum speed of k and endure for 21 hours. Intended for surveillance, reconnaissance, and aerial strike, the drone can carry a maximum external payload of kg.
The medium-altitude long-endurance MALE aircraft can endure for 32 hours and cruise at a maximum speed of k. It has a maximum take-off weight of 4,kg and a service ceiling of 32,ft. Image courtesy of US Army. The UAS is designed to carry a total payload of kg while its full fuel and external payload capacities are respectively kg and kg.
The combat drone version can carry four Hellfire missiles. The maximum permitted altitude and a maximum speed of the UAV are 29,ft and k, respectively. The UAS has a maximum endurance of 25 hours while the extended range version offers an endurance of 40 hours.
Yabhon United 40 Yabhon United 40 features four under-wing pods to carry ammunition. Image courtesy of Vitaly V. The aircraft is in service with Algerian Forces and locally named as Algeria The multi-mission UAV is capable of carrying a maximum payload of 1,kg, which includes sensors and surveillance systems such as camera platforms, synthetic aperture radar SAR , and sonar. The combat drone features four pods under the wing for carrying ammunition weighing up to kg.
The unmanned aircraft also has provision for additional fitment of external payload near the belly of the fuselage. Powered by a hybrid turbine-electric propulsion system, the aircraft can reach a maximum speed of k and can remain airborne for hours.
The maximum permissible take-off weight of the aircraft is 1,kg. The combat drone is capable of carrying out combat missions, reconnaissance, surveillance, patrol, and target positioning. It has a maximum take-off weight of 3,kg and payload capacity of 1,kg. Powered by a HP single engine, the aircraft can reach a speed of k and offer a maximum endurance of 60 hours. UAVs will need low signatures to survive, but stealth alone is unlikely to protect an air vehicle that loiters for a significant period of time in view of netted air defenses.
Threat-detection-and-response considerations may include provisions for threat cueing by offboard sensors or systems, onboard threat-detection systems, threat-avoidance maneuver algorithms, and active self-defense measures normally employed on manned aircraft.
That is, UAVs may need to deploy decoys, launch antiradiation weapons to attack enemy air defense radars, and engage incoming surface-to-air missiles with air-to-air weapons. In addition to developing methods of employment that minimize the exposure of UAVs to threats, technologies need to be considered from the outset of the design process and applied to UAVs to improve their tolerance to damage and their ability to avoid damage. These protections are provided in manned aircraft by liberal use of redundancy to eliminate critical single-point failures and by incorporating damage tolerance and hardening in the basic design as well as threat-detection and defensive systems.
These survivability features need to be incorporated as appropriate, on the basis of trade-off studies of UAV cost, criticality of function, and anticipated threat environment.
Such features have been developed in manned aircraft and would be straightforward to adapt to UAVs. The history of UAV development includes failed programs that overemphasized low cost at the expense of reliability. In these cost-driven programs, fundamental reliability-driven design philosophies and processes based on years of experience with manned aircraft were not followed.
Some low-cost UAVs did not even use qualified aerospace components, and hence these UAVs experienced high in-flight failure rates. These low-cost-driven designs had little or no redundancy, even for flight-critical systems. The end result was high crash rates, in some cases resulting in program cancellation.
Fortunately, however, this was. Predator and Global Hawk Class A accident rates are comparable with those of manned fighters F during its early development through initial operational deployment at equivalent cumulative flight hours. For example, the BQM Firebee high-speed target drone family of UAVs was based on traditional aerospace-quality design processes and as a consequence experienced much higher levels of reliability.
Contemporary UAV design philosophy has been much more attentive to reliability and redundancy requirements, and in-flight failures and subsequent mishap rates have moderated. This change can be seen from Figure 4. This plot shows that the mishap rates for these UAVs are comparable with those of the F during its early development through initial operational deployment.
Therefore, as the Predator and Global Hawk mature and accumulate operational flight hours and experience, they may be able to approach comparable levels of flight safety. Continued emphasis in this area, however, will be essential if the real potential is to be realized. The costs of system development and procurement are two of the four elements of the life-cycle cost of UAVs. While this may be attributable to the fact that the industry is much lower on the learning curve with UAVs compared with manned aircraft, early expectations that UAVs could be developed and procured at significantly lower cost than their manned equivalents have not materialized.
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. In fact, as UAV systems mature, there will be opportunities to significantly reduce overall development and acquisition costs in the future. Because of the fundamentally distributed nature of UAV systems, there will be opportunities for developers of future UAVs to take advantage of existing system components, as opposed to developing new elements that could be optimum for the new applications but at higher development and acquisition cost.
In order to achieve this goal, however, it will be essential that naval UAV system architectures be designed to standardized interface requirements at a minimum. The last but perhaps most important issue affecting UAV deployment in support of naval operations is cultural acceptance. This well-known issue does not need to be further elaborated here, except to note that success breeds success. UAV program decisions, therefore, need to be constantly evaluated from the perspective of their long-term program impact.
Shortsighted decisions that adversely affect UAV system reliability, maintainability, and safety could have detrimental effects that extend beyond an individual program. For example, UAV lessons learned have shown that the selection of remotely piloted takeoff and landing can minimize early development cost but result in substantially higher attrition and overall life-cycle costs compared with those for automated takeoff and landing. Conclusions and recommendations based on the preceding UAV background and discussion are presented in the following subsections.
In assessing the UAV situation today, the committee believes that the United States has made considerable progress over the past 3 to 4 years in moving to exploit the potential offered by unmanned air systems. Little doubt remains as to the operational utility and military worth of UAVs. They have proven themselves in combat, and warfighters want them, particularly since UAVs are now seen as essential to realizing the all-important persistent surveillance of the battlespace. UAVs have indeed come of age at last and are destined to play an increasingly important role in future years for ISR, strike, and other key military missions.
Also, it appears that UAVs have strong support in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, among the unified combatant commanders, and with members of Congress. Accordingly, the Naval Services need to capitalize on the current positive climate and move out with dispatch to exploit the momentum that has been established.
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. There are manifold reasons for this slow pace of introduction and utilization of UAVs, with some key areas as follows:. Culture and policy. The culture of any large institution of long standing almost always militates against ready acceptance of new concepts or, in the case of the military, against new weapons systems.
The Navy is not immune to the effects of this phenomenon. Competition with legacy and other new systems for funds. Replacing aging ships and aircraft, provisioning them with weapons, and paying for operations and maintenance constitute a heavy financial burden. In such an environment, it is often the case that a new kind of system, such as UAVs, remains at the bottom of the priority list. The program start-stop-start syndrome. The unfortunate practice of starting a military program and then, when production is about to commence, canceling it in favor of a supposedly more promising system, has plagued the UAV world for years.
Each such sequence adds years of delay in equipping the operating forces with UAVs. And currently, production and fleet introduction of the already-developed Fire Scout are in jeopardy. Greater than expected costs, high accident rates, unreliable systems, and combat survivability concerns. These concerns are valid, but all are solvable if the requisite attention is paid to them.
Reluctance of one military Service to use the UAV system of another. But there are obvious cost and operational advantages for the DOD if multi-Service use can be achieved—overall system development costs are reduced, and UAV force levels can be increased more rapidly. Radio-frequency bandwidth constraints and lack of interoperability.
The Navy, on the other hand, has no UAVs in regular production and none in its operating forces. The Marines have some 22 aging Pioneers, a small tactical system developed in the s, and operated them with mixed effectiveness during Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom as well as during the Kosovo campaigns.
Additionally, the Marine. Corps has begun to introduce the small, human-portable Dragon Eye system to serve units at battalion level and below. But in the aggregate, the Naval Services, which once led the Department of Defense in developing and fielding UAVs, are now lagging the other Services in gaining operational experience, developing operational concepts, and exploiting the transformational warfighting potential offered by these unmanned air systems.
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.
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.
Hence, an important strategy to increase involvement by the Naval Services with UAVs is to accelerate the introduction or exploitation of those systems that are in production or have completed development and are judged to have significant operational utility. To this end, the committee concludes the following:. Requirements generation is best approached from the perspective of mission needs and effects versus that of platform ownership or base location,. Essential enhancements to command, control, and communications C3 and information-exploitation systems need to be made concurrent with accelerating the introduction of already-developed UAV systems into the fleet and Fleet Marine Force.
However, the roadmap has been slow to evolve and, in addition, it does not address advanced technology needs or issues between the two Services regarding the use of tactical UAVs. Department of the Navy. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. The Navy views its future use of UAVs to be in primarily three categories:. Ship-based tactical surveillance and targeting, which call for a vertical-takeoff-and-landing VTOL system that can operate from a variety of types of ships.
The committee endorses the J-UCAS program as presently planned and urges that Service leadership strongly support this promising initiative. The road ahead seems unclear for the long-dwell standoff ISR system.
Further, this development is to take place concurrently with spiral development improvements to the Air Force Global Hawk system. That system, like the Navy BAMS, will require considerable research, development, testing, and evaluation investment. This concurrency offers the potential for a joint program with the Air Force for the acquisition and operation of a common system that would meet both overland and maritime needs.
The potential exists for reduced development costs to the Navy and to the DOD overall, as well as the opportunity for greater operational flexibility for regional combatant commanders. Part of such an approach would also be to increase the annual Global Hawk production rate, with a resultant reduction in air vehicle unit production costs for both Services. At present the Navy has no ship-based TUAV capability, and there is no formal acquisition program for. Here the committee is concerned that the introduction of a sea-based tactical surveillance and targeting capability in the fleet, which could begin with the Fire Scout as early as , now appears to be tied to the development of a new ship class not scheduled for initial operating capability until after The committee also notes that the current plan for the Fire Scout does not include ships other than the LCS.
Equally important, naval forces at sea will be denied the opportunity of working directly with a modern ISR UAV system to gain operational experience, develop employment concepts, and formulate operational requirements for future systems. It therefore appears to the committee that the Naval Services will continue to suffer from a serious ISR deficit at least through , 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.
At the tactical level, the Marine Corps plan is for MAGTFs to continue relying on the Pioneer for operations ashore until it is replaced by a tactical UAV system suitable for use from both sea and land bases. This future system will operate from amphibious assault ships LHD amphibious assault ship, multipurpose , LHA amphibious assault ship, general purpose , and LPD amphibious transport dock classes within the ESG or from a future class of sea base ships, and also from land when operationally required.
The Dragon Eye was employed on a limited basis in the recent drive on Baghdad, with reasonable results for a system still under development. The Marine Corps, therefore, is looking at the U. Coast Guard Eagle Eye tilt-rotor development as well as at other systems as potential candidates for their combination of VTOL capabilities and high cruise speed.
The Fire Scout and Eagle Eye offer the same endurance and similar sensors, and each is limited to a line-of-sight communications range. Hence, other than speed, the principal difference between the two VTUAVs is readiness for production. The Fire Scout is a fully developed system ready for production; units could be in the fleet within 20 months of a production go-ahead.
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 This higher performance is desired in order to facilitate surveillance and screening operations out in front of the V Osprey, and with the control of the UAV being exercised from the Osprey. Hence, if selected by the Marine Corps, a tilt-rotor-like VTOL UAV will realistically be viewed as the first of a line of high-speed unmanned rotorcraft, likely employing tilt-rotor or tilt-wing technology.
Further, the two Services agree that, from an affordability and operational flexibility perspective, a single ship-and-shore-suitable tactical UAV system, meeting both Navy and Marine Corps needs, is the correct path for the future.
And since the Fire Scout is the only such system currently available, the Navy can therefore move immediately to acquire a small force of Fire Scouts to develop operational concepts and tactics, help formulate requirements for future systems, and provide a sea-based ISR UAV contingency response resource.
Further, to facilitate an accelerated introduction of the Fire Scout into the fleet in , a VTUAV tactical development squadron should be formed by the Navy and the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard invited to participate. Notwithstanding what the choice for a future sea-based tactical UAV may be, the experience gained near term with the Fire Scout and its ground station, modern sensor and data link, ship-deck retrieval system, and its automatic landing capability would be directly transferable to any subsequent future system.
There appears to be little or no planning for UAVs or other kinds of unmanned systems onboard the LCS, especially in terms of the logistics requirements needed to support those 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.
Accelerate the Introduction of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The Navy and Marine Corps should accelerate the introduction, or fully exploit the capabilities, of those unmanned aerial vehicle UAV systems of all of the military Services that are now in production or through development and judged to have significant operational utility, such as the Global Hawk, Predator, Shadow , Fire Scout,. Concurrently, the two Services should move vigorously to eliminate or significantly mitigate deficiencies in the equipment and infrastructure of command, control, and communications C3 and imagery-exploitation systems that limit the use of the aforementioned UAV systems.
It is important for the naval operational community to develop the operational concepts and create the operational pull necessary to accelerate UAV introduction. In their joint approach, the two Services should increase the system production rate above that now planned in order to realize operational and cost benefits. They should also explore the potential for a joint arrangement with the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies. The Assistant Secretary of the Navy Research, Development, and Acquisition should support a limited procurement of Fire Scout systems to provide the fleet in the near term with a modern, automated, ship-based, vertical-takeoff-and-landing UAV for developing operational concepts and requirements for a future naval VTUAV system and to serve as a contingency response resource.
To facilitate the accelerated introduction of the Fire Scout into the fleet in , a VTUAV tactical development squadron should be formed by the Navy and the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard should be invited to participate. In addition, those requirements. The forum should encourage interaction between UAV developers and operators of all of the military Services, resolve interoperability issues, and identify new warfighting capabilities for UAVs that may be applicable in urban and littoral warfare environments.
A key task should be pinpointing missions that might be executed more effectively and economically by UAVs and formulating system requirements to meet those needs. Where appropriate, and in situations in which needs cannot be met by other means, the forum should recommend what new UAV developments need to be initiated.
The forum should also foster experimentation and should formulate and recommend operational and technical experiments involving UAV systems, including collaborations of UAVs with manned vehicles. In concert with the other military Services, the Secretary of the Navy should work to ensure that the Department of Defense is actively supporting initiatives that will lead to safe, unrestricted flight by UAVs in the U.
National Airspace System, in international controlled airspace, and in combat theaters. The progress of these developments should be tracked year to year. At a minimum, the following technologies should be considered in this context:. In addition, a number of advanced UAV concepts should be continually evaluated, including the following:. Autonomous vehicles AVs have been used in military operations for more than 60 years, with torpedoes, cruise missiles, satellites, and target drones being early examples.
Recent military experiences with AVs have consistently demonstrated their value in a wide range of missions, and anticipated developments of AVs hold promise for increasingly significant roles in future naval operations.
Advances in AV capabilities are enabled and limited by progress in the technologies of computing and robotics, navigation, communications and networking, power sources and propulsion, and materials.
Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations is a forward-looking discussion of the naval operational environment and vision for the Navy and Marine Corps and of naval mission needs and potential applications and limitations of AVs. This report considers the potential of AVs for naval operations, operational needs and technology issues, and opportunities for improved operations.
Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website. Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. The reality is that civilians have been hit in strike after strike as targets are misidentified.
Precise figures, however, are hard to establish as much of the information is classified. In a rare piece of disclosure , the US said air strikes from both drones and planes, the figures are not separated out had been made against targets outside Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria between January and December But Jennifer Gibson at human rights group Reprieve says the organisation has tracked a high rate of errors.
Some disclosures stretch credibility to the limit. The UK says only one civilian was killed or injured from British drone and air raids in Syria and Iraq, between September and January In the those same raids, Britain said 4, fighters were killed. Press reports tell a different story. Over the past 12 months, a US drone strike was believed to have killed 30 farm workers in Afghanistan ; up to 11 civilians were killed in a US drone strike in the south of Libya.
The US operates a policy of signature or pattern targeting, in which strikes are launched at places where targets are believed to gather, although this can easily lead to mistakes.
That idea appears to be spreading: the UAE is accused of operating a double tap strike in Libya this August, which killed 45 people including guests from a nearby wedding who had come over to help. The UK was not at war in Syria at the time, but then-prime minister David Cameron asserted he had the power to make the decision to target him. The long term question is whether humans will be removed from the loop — the science fiction nightmare where AI-powered drones will select and lock on to targets with no human oversight.
There is no shortage of speculation about the topic and concern about the idea, but as yet little evidence of the use of drones, particularly lethal drones, being governed solely by computer.
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