History and Development of UAV Technology in U.S.A and Israel

UAVs have been around since the 1960s. However, since the mid-1980s a number of major technical developments have made UAVs much more effective. As a result they have proliferated tremendously.
Several EU countries have used UAVs for decades, although their operational use in combat situations is limited. The EU has a small industrial capability to develop and produce most types of advanced UAV systems, including actual UAV aircraft, its components, the control system and the sensors. The only fields where the EU industry is not strongly engaged are micro UAVs and large, very long-range UAVs (HALE).

EU members have been unsuccessful in exporting UAVs to non-EU members. Most UAVs in service globally are US or Israeli products. The demand for UAVs is increasing, both in the EU and globally. Much of the current EU demand is met by either by US UAV systems or by hybrid Israeli-EU systems. With US systems, generally the complete UAV system is acquired. In the case of the Israeli-EU systems, the UAV aircraft is acquired or licensed produced from Israel and fitted with European sensors.

Globally UCAVs are currently limited to small numbers of lightly armed versions of ‘normal’ UAVs. None of these is at this moment in service in the EU. Development of UCAV technology demonstrators is ongoing in the EU. If EU members take part in ESDP missions it is not difficult to find enough UAVs for the mission. But the more important question would be whether the UAVs would be able to provide data quickly to the different national contingents that would comprise an ESDP mission.

While Europe has adopted policies for out-of-area missions, it is still unclear how far these missions go beyond peacekeeping and limited peace-enforcing under UN mandates. While the use of UAV in such operations is demonstrated, it leaves the usefulness of UCAVs in some doubt.

The availability of long-range unmanned strike systems such as UCAVs may lead to a lowering of the threshold for offensive operations that go beyond currently agreed EU policies. However, as demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, an easy victory on the battlefield achieved with high-tech weaponry, does not solve the problem nor limits the necessity of large deployments of vulnerable ground troops.

Since UAVs are generally rather simple systems, needing limited investments, there is room for several producers in the EU. UCAVs are exponentially more expensive and will, like other large systems such as combat aircraft and air-defence missiles, need significant investments. Cooperating on production within the EU seems unavoidable. However, current efforts within the EU are focused on the development of working concepts. While greater coordination may seem useful, it could be that having several independent projects is actually productive too by providing several initiatives for devising an effective and credible working concept.