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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