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

UAS ROADMAP 2005
provides options for risk taking and risk avoidance not previously available. Combined, these tenets
continue to offer transformational opportunities. “Cost” can no longer be considered an advantage unique
to any unmanned vehicle. History has taught that if UA are going to fly regularly in any nation’s
controlled airspaces, then those UA must functionally meet the same “reliability” standards as manned
aircraft. As a result, the cost per pound of unmanned becomes practically the same as manned. However,
this implies if a “class” of UA does not have to fly in controlled airspace, and thus does not need to be
certified to the same reliability levels, then the advantage in the design process results in cost/pound
production savings. This appears to be applicable to some small UA, and potentially all of the MAVs. It
suggests a potential for staggering life-cycle cost savings if the procurement of these aircraft can be
treated as a consumable item.
MISSION
UA have “turned the corner” with regard to mission application. DoD no longer needs to search for niche
missions for UA. Supported by government laboratory research, the U.S. aerospace and software
industries are world leaders and understand the science, engineering, and art required to develop and
produce world-class UA capabilities. For the next 25 years, DoD will focus the labs and industry on the
following mission areas: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), SEAD, destruction of
enemy air defense (DEAD), electronic attack (EA), anti-surface ship warfare, anti-submarine warfare,
mine warfare, ship to objective maneuver, communications relay, and derivations of these themes.
Offensive and defensive counter air and airlift missions will remain on the “to do” list, awaiting
improvements in autonomy and cognitive capabilities.
Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
“Strategic Planning Guidance for Fiscal Years 2006-2011,” places a premium on the ISR mission area to
enable successful strategies against “irregular” and “catastrophic” threats. The unique advantages of UA
will provide a growing contribution to success in these areas.
The airborne ISR mission can be divided into three distinct segments: “standoff,” where collections are
made while recognizing the sovereign airspace of other countries; “over flight,” where ISR platforms fly
in the sovereign airspace of another nation, with or without consent, but at low risk to the mission; and
finally, “denied,” which is similar to “over flight” except the nation-state being flown against possesses a
credible capability to deny access to their territory. Space assets are usually employed globally in
“denied” access roles; however space assets cannot conduct “unwarned” collection. This means
adversaries know when satellites will come above the horizon, and take appropriate action to deny
collection opportunities. Only aircraft currently possess the ability to show up at a specific time,
(unwarned). Together space and airborne systems provide a collection architecture that can compliment
each other to fill gaps and provide information dominance. The UA advantages of “persistence” and “no
human on-board” provide significant opportunities to achieve to an “unwarned” collection capability.
This addresses the portion of the problem relating to getting an asset in position to collect. However,
there remain other serious ISR problems before a total solution exists.
Even if DoD can get a collection asset in the right position to collect, the problem still remains of trying
to discriminate camouflaged and deeply buried targets. Small UA may provide answers where large
platforms with large expensive sensors cannot. New capabilities and/or new paradigms will need to be
explored. At the same time, integration of new capabilities with the Global Information Grid and with
multi-national programs into a net-centric force will be mandated. As new capabilities are developed for
these difficult problems, proper systems engineering principles must be applied to achieve the best value.
DoD must emphasize development as a “system,” and not as an aircraft in search of a mission. System
trade-space must be understood at the beginning. A robust design that can accommodate a wide variety
of simultaneous sensors may be very flexible, but it could also be extremely expensive to produce and
sustain. Trade studies need to be made between these robust concepts and cheaper “dedicated” capability
concepts. The later affords commercial industry an opportunity to provide alternative solutions that can
APPENDIX A – MISSIONS
Page A-2