Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap 2005-2030 - Federation of ...

UAS ROADMAP 2005
� Aircraft Control, everything but payloads and weapons.
� Payload, product and control.
� Weapons, kinetic and electronic.
� Situation Awareness.
These four functional interfaces and their corresponding processes must be distinct and accessed
separately (Figure C-8). One overall aircraft design goal would be to allow changes to payloads without
requiring recertification of the flight control system software. Another would be to provide security to the
various functions and subsystems: weapons security, aircraft security, and payload security. Secure
methods must be developed that allow machine to machine sensor tasking, while precluding inadvertent
automatic weapons employment through an aircraft control or payload control interface.
Aircraft Control Function
UA control applications can and should be designed with net-centricity in mind. Rather than stand alone
applications, installed on custom equipment, UA controls can be designed and deployed as network
services, accessed by general purpose computers, and interfaced through the GIG via TCP/IP.
Payload Function
The word “payload” refers to all UA functions that are not aircraft command and control, not weapons
employment, and not situation awareness. Currently this includes an array of electro optical sensors,
synthetic aperture radar, signals intelligence sensors, and communications relay equipment. Electro
optical sensors collect both still and motion imagery. These include visible, infra red, multi-spectral and
hyper spectral sensors.
Many current UA payloads require extensive custom interfaces to integrate sensors, platforms and control
stations. Changes in payload and aircraft configuration ripple across many systems and subsystems in
some cases requiring recertification of flight control mechanisms. Future UA payloads must be modular,
which means independent of and separable from the UA, especially the UA’s flight critical systems. This
can be accomplished by implementing the following in all new payload designs (see Appendix E)
� Standard physical interfaces. includes mounting brackets and electrical/electronic connectors
� Standard product format. imagery, SIGINT, communications relay
� Standard control interface mapping. assigning corresponding functions on different UA systems to
the same keyboard commands
Weapons Function
The weapons function includes dropping bombs, launching missiles and conducting information
operations. The weapons function must be isolated from payload and platform control to preclude
inappropriate access to weapons functions, and subsequent accidental employment, through non-weapons
functions interfaces. The weapons function must support common message sets such as those described
in MIL-STD-1760.
Situation Awareness Function
The situation awareness function provides situation awareness from two perspectives: that of the UA
operator and that of other operators in the airspace. The UA Interoperability Integrated Product Team
identified a set of data elements required to support situation awareness. It also identified the need to
register these data elements with the DISA metadata registry to support Extensible Markup Language
(XML) tagging. The data types and units are based on the international standard for units (SI) and are the
same as data elements defined in NATO STANAG 4586. The situation awareness function supports
capabilities provided by:
� Link 16
� Integrated Broadcast System (IBS)
APPENDIX C - COMMUNICATIONS
Page C-15