PREDATOR AND GLOBAL HAWK
Predator or Global Hawk can be “piloted” from ground stations halfway around the world, while a hand launched micro air vehicle (MAV) like the Marine Corps Wasp can be monitored from a laptop or hand-held video display. Specialty UAVs “sniff” the air for chemical or biological weapons, monitor radiation levels, look for improvised explosive devices, protect convoys from ambush, patrol borders, locate smugglers and terrorists using small boats, aid search and rescue missions, and perform a seemingly endless list of additional tasks.
The growing variety of platforms worldwide has led to a wide range of shapes, sizes, propulsion systems, and range/altitude/endurance mixes. That, in turn, has brought about a rebirth for lighter-than-air unmanned fliers, from small and medium-sized tethered balloons and blimps to massive powered airships. Lockheed Martin, for example, is designing a high-altitude airship 25 times larger than the Goodyear blimp that could remain
“parked” 100,000 ft above its target zone for weeks or even months.
Even that does not come close to the Vulture, currently in competitive design for DARPA by Aurora Flight Services, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. The program work
statement was extremely basic: Carry at least 1,000 lb of payload, produce 5 kW of onboard power, demonstrate 99% on-station capability and high probability of mission successand stay aloft for five years without landing.
Also being resurrected in labs, thanks to both advances in micro- and nanotechnology and the desire to see and hear inside buildings, are bird- and insect-style MAVs, the first targeted for 2015, the latter for 2030. Tiny platforms, designed with flapping wings to make them more easily mistaken for actual birds or insects, could be launched in a swarm into a building to seek out terrorists, hostages, snipers, and intelligence.
UAVs are so much a part of warfare and military planning that two new concepts dedicated UAV carriers and counter-UAV systems are under consideration or development. The most ambitious of the former is the
UXV Combatant warship proposed by BAE Systems. The 8,000-ton vessel, which could enter service in the 2020s if pursued by a major naval force, would be dedicated to the launch and recovery of large numbers of unmanned vehicles, serving as mothership, control center, and maintenance facility for UAVs and, in all likelihood, unmanned surface and underwater vessels as well. Serving as a kind of small carrier, it also could host helicopters, VTOL aircraft like the Marine Corps V-22, and smart munitions such as cruise missiles.
The U.S. and its allies are not the only militaries deploying or planning to deploy UAVs, of course. And although the technologies that have made the current generation of U.S., European, and Israeli systems so successful will take time and resources to duplicate, the speed with which space launchers and nuclear weapons are proliferating suggests that gap may close far faster in the less complex UAV race. As a result, engineers also are now looking at anti-UAV systems, both to use against potential adversaries and to learn
how best to protect their own UAVs from someone else’s countermeasures.
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