UAVs Today

      Unfortunately today the Gyrodyne QH-50 series VTOL-UAV has been relegated to simply towing targets. With its' past myriad of sensor and weaponized accomplishments dating back some 42 years, Gyrodyne hopes that current Department of Defense planners some day rediscover the past generation's accomplishments in order to solve today's problems with already created technology. 

In order to appreciate the pioneering efforts of the Gyrodyne Helicopter Company in VTOL UAV development, we herein present the following article from Aviation Week and Space Technology's July 8, 2002 issue that addresses the past, present and the future of UAVs.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

By William B. Scott of Colorado Springs

Unmanned aerial vehicles are rapidly coming of age after years of being relegated to the sidelines of limited, specialized missions. While they will proliferate and assume unforeseen roles, it's unlikely they'll replace manned combat aircraft for some time, if ever.

    Though still in their infancy, UAVs and their armed cousins, unmanned air combat vehicles (UCAVs), achieved a new level of respect during the recent antiterrorist campaign in Afghanistan. Predators and Global Hawks served as eyes-in-the-sky and electronic sniffers, transmitting real-time imagery and data streams to control centers miles away. No news there; drones and UAVs had been doing that for years.

    Then someone strapped Hellfire missiles on a Predator, validated the armed-UAV concept during a brief test, and the small single-engine drone started firing at Al Qaeda and Taliban forces. That was news, and Predator/Hellfire's combat effectiveness was acknowledged with new respect in the Pentagon and Congress.

    Suddenly, UAVs and UCAVs were the darlings of senators, representatives and generals. President Bush even lauded UAVs in his state of the union address. The Pentagon established a joint-service UAV Planning Task Force to coordinate the development and use of future UAV systems, focusing on near-term applications--intelligence-gathering, surveillance, reconnaissance, and communications and sensor platforms. And money started flowing to the UAV community.

    IDEAS FOR unmanned vehicle missions are ranging further a field now and proliferating rapidly. Government and industry prognosticators have said that UAVs and UCAVs will take over many roles now handled by manned aircraft. Almost two years ago, a Senate committee proposed that, by 2010, a third of U.S. deep-strike aircraft should be unmanned. Air Force Col. John Warden (ret.), president of Venturist Inc., a former fighter pilot and the primary architect of the Persian Gulf air war, predicts UCAVs will comprise 90% of U.S. air breathing combat aircraft by 2020--and maybe before. "They are rapidly approaching the point where they will be able to do most things a man can do--other than untangle complicated shoot/ no-shoot decisions on the spot," he said.

    Another ex-fighter pilot, Gen. Howell M. Estes, 3rd (ret.), sees a substantial future role for UAVs/UCAVs, but with limits. "A man's brain is far better than any UAV's computer, which [today] has about the same capability as a cat's brain, when it comes to reasoning or the thought process," he said. Estes commanded the first operational F-117 stealth fighter unit, and finished his USAF career as chief of U.S. and Air Force space commands.

    Experts argue that the issue of manned versus unmanned air vehicles cannot be reduced to an either-or basis. There are advantages and drawbacks to both. Ultimately, the U.S. and other nations will probably field a robust mix of the two. Missions flown by UAVs and UCAVs will gravitate toward those compatible with their primary strengths--persistence, expendability and stealth.

    Sending unmanned instead of manned aircraft into the teeth of a modern integrated air defense system or a battlefield contaminated by chemical or biological agents makes obvious good sense. Drones really are fearless--and expendable. Although not cheap, losing a few UAVs is far better than having a manned fighter shot down and a pilot captured. Combat search and rescue missions that put dozens of airmen and Para rescue specialists at risk are acceptable when a pilot is down, but would never be launched to recover a crashed Predator or Global Hawk. Bombing the UAV/UCAV crash site might be in order to protect classified systems, but that's an entirely different concern.

    Piloted aircraft will be dedicated to missions where on-scene judgment is a priority--such as close air support (CAS) or strikes near civilian-populated areas. Both air and ground commanders always worry about CAS pilots dropping ordnance on friendly troops. The mere idea of an unmanned bomber flying CAS missions would probably trigger a frantic infantry retreat.

    The U.S. is clearly committed to developing and fielding a full spectrum of UAVs and UCAVs, as evidenced by its nearly $1.2-billion annual expenditure on research. Numerous studies, such as USAF's "New World Vistas," and joint and service-level "vision" plans that evolved from them call for using UAVs in bistatic radar systems, as communications relays and rapidly deployable surveillance and weapon-delivery platforms. But their potential outstrips most of today's visions.

    Warden noted that the proper combination of long-endurance unmanned aircraft, multispectral sensors and directed-energy or advanced kinetic-kill weapons could solve the mobile-target problem Pentagon officials have been wrestling with since the 1991 war with Iraq. Then, Iraqi Scuds on mobile launchers proved to be a vexing problem that consumed considerable combat air resources, with only limited success in curtailing missile attacks.

    "Persistence [of a UAV] is a big plus . . . especially when it's accompanied by the ability to shoot," Warden said. That leaves an enemy with few good alternatives. "If he operates from a fixed facility, he is doomed (even if deeply buried). Surface movement--which previously provided some possibility of survival--becomes less feasible when you have to [worry] about a silent machine overhead that could shoot you at any time. [UCAVs] have the capability to create a mini-revolution in air warfare."

    On the battlefield, micro-UAVs could become an Army or Marine Corps platoon leader's most valuable scout. Troops could launch tiny aircraft equipped with video or infrared sensors and data links, and literally see over the next hill, quickly spotting enemy positions and movements. Using the UAV to laser-designate an artillery piece or relay a dug-in force's GPS coordinates, the small-unit commander could quickly devise an attack that ensured the target's destruction with minimal risk to his own troops.

    UNMANNED AIRCRAFT may find novel applications in homeland defense, too. As an antiterrorist weapon, a quiet UAV/ UCAV could monitor and track suspects without their knowledge. Bug- or bird-size UAVs might listen to conversations or watch a bomb maker at work, relaying critical information to military or law enforcement officials.

    Just as visionaries during the airplane's early days could not foresee the myriad tasks fixed- and rotary-wing air platforms now perform, even today's brightest futurists cannot predict the roles unmanned vehicles will eventually assume. Will dozens of UAVs carrying infrared and visible-light sensor suites someday patrol the skies over the Rocky Mountains, instantly spotting and geolocating fires started by lightning or ecoterrorists? Maybe. Could the same UAV be armed with a cold-gas-powered missile carrying a fire-extinguishing agent, ready to be remotely launched at flames before they spread? Possibly. Might this fleet be controlled from a specialized "mother ship" staffed with firefighting experts who operate the airborne network as a highly integrated system? Perhaps.

    WHATEVER THE application or mission, manned and unmanned air vehicles will be most effective when designed and configured to operate as elements of an integrated network. Fighters and UCAVs may fly together, with the unmanned platforms serving as "scouts," anti-air defense "wild weasels," jammers or first-wave strikers. Manned aircraft in the strike package might be UCAV control nodes, with crewmembers making on-scene decisions when human intervention is required.

    But the road to achieving a highly integrated, net-centric force of manned and unmanned vehicles will probably be a bumpy one. Pilots trained to fly fighters, ground-attack aircraft, gunships and cargo haulers have not been thrilled at being assigned to UAV units. Attempts to bolster morale by calling these pilots "pathfinders" and "pioneers" on the cutting edge of a new warfighting technology have failed. As one pilot said, "I didn't grow up dreaming about flying model airplanes from inside a shipping container," referring to the ground stations that house Predator operators.

    The services will eventually find a better way of selecting and training UAV/UCAV pilots. Prime candidates might be those who are motivated to fly, but don't qualify for flight duty, thanks to less-than-perfect eyesight or color blindness, for instance. Given proper training, engineering officers or enlisted technicians also might be more motivated to flying UAVs/UCAVs than experienced aircraft pilots. Clearly, the current practice of assigning a proficient, combat-qualified F-15 or F-16 pilot to UAV-flying duty is a no-win, dead-end situation for both the crewmember and the Pentagon. It can't persist over the long term without hurting both manned and unmanned communities.

    Transforming any nation's air operations to a viable mix of manned and unmanned craft will require addressing two other challenges: cost and the "hero" factor. Although conventional wisdom says UAVs and UCAVs are cheaper to operate than a manned aircraft, that hasn't been proven in practice, so far. A USAF Science Advisory Board study several years ago showed the life cycle, full-up system costs of UAV units tend to exceed those of their manned counterparts. Their logistics tails are long and materiel-rich, and it takes a small army to keep UAV/UCAV units running. Finally, there's the attrition factor. These things crash from time to time, although loss rates will continue to drop with improved reliability and experience. Still, communication link disruptions, jamming and weather interference may always cause a drone to "go dumb and crash," a senior pilot said.

    Burt Rutan, president of Scaled Composites and a designer of innovative air vehicles, said the use of UAVs/UCAVs in combat operations will have a cultural impact. Historically, societies have honored warriors, because warriors risk their lives to protect their fellow citizens. In the process, heroes emerge--those who take extraordinary risks in battle, or give their lives for the greater good.

    "IF WAR IS FOUGHT by robots, there will be no heroes, because nobody's life is at risk," Rutan said. "Societies need heroes, and I don't see UAV pilots becoming [national] war heroes." So, where will nations find their real heroes when life-risking warriors are no more, when conflicts are fought by "intelligent" machines, not humans?

    This and many other questions have yet to be answered. Rest assured, though, at some future date, combat units will see UAVs/UCAVs and fighters parked on the same flight line. John Warden might expect to see some of the UCAVs armed with nonlethal weapons suitable for counterterrorism and urban operations. The handful of manned "superfighters" would be hypersonic, long-range aircraft carrying "a variety of weapons, ranging from directed-energy to hypervelocity kinetic," he said.

    Only time, national will and budget commitments will determine whether today's visions of a high-tech manned-unmanned force become reality or not.

 

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