The concept of unmanned spy planes flying unseen and unheard above enemy lines is not new. Remotely piloted aircraft were used for reconnaissance in the Korean War and for top-secret missions over hazardous areas of Vietnam. But it is only in the past few years that interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has skyrocketed. Interest has been spurred by well-defined needs, mature technology and confidence in the utility of UAVs on and off the battlefield. During the Persian Gulf War, the Pioneer remotely piloted vehicle provided critical reconnaissance and target acquisition information, winning legions of supporters within the military. At the same time, changing war-fighting strategies based on the ability to obtain detailed knowledge of the battlefield reinforced the need for a family of UAVs, including tactical and high-altitude endurance systems.
| Outrider, the newest addition to the US military's family of UAVs in development, provides instantaneous reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition information |
According to Col. Roger Duckworth, deputy director of the unmanned aerial vehicles joint project office in Washington DC: "Information garnered from UAVs will allow future commanders to make timely, confident decisions to apply an indirect approach to win without fighting, to conduct a precision operation for a specific objective or to apply aimed firepower for total victory."
Industry is as enthusiastic about UAVs as the military. The technologies are mature, making integration the only real challenge. Within the next two years, military systems will be rolling off production lines, opening the door to civil and commercial applications. Richard T Wagaman, past president of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems said: "UAVs may begin to replace manned aircraft for the transportation and delivery of goods and services under benign or routine conditions. Unmanned aircraft may perform as effectively and more cheaply than satellites or manned aircraft.
A variety of high-altitude endurance UAVs for broad-area surveillance are in the US Pentagon's product pipeline already. Outrider, the newest, smallest and least costly of the US Pentagon's UAVs, was chosen in May 1996 as the sole vehicle to provide tactical information to front-line units of the US Army, Marines and Navy. Unlike endurance UAVs, Outrider will be transportable and immediately available for commanders' use. It will gather specialised data for directing gunfire and air strikes and for manoeuvring ground forces. A forward-looking infrared (FLIR) and colour charge-coupled device (CCD) camera will transmit the image of a tank, for instance, from 200km.
Initially the three US services' different requirements precluded one vehicle from satisfying all their tactical mission needs. The biggest doubt stemmed from the ability of the army's ground-based UAV to meet the requirements of shipboard operation.
Outrider, that is being produced by an industry team led by Alliant Techsystems, Hopkins, Minnesota, had the resilience and flexibility to satisfy all three services. It was designed for both ground and shipboard operations. It can take off from short, unimproved ground surfaces or large-deck amphibious ships without launch equipment and land on those surfaces without parachutes, parafoils or arresting wires.
| Live video transmitted from Outrider is annotated with date, time, target location and heading and selectable compass rose |
Each Outrider system consists of four dual-wing air vehicles, their mission payloads, associated ground control equipment, a global positioning system launch and recovery system and a remote terminal to provide payload information to the field commander. Two people can assemble the modular 10-piece airframe in 26 minutes and flight operations take only three minutes for takeoff and two minutes for landing.
Takeoff and landing are automatic. Prior UAV developments that depended on ground-based operators to fly the aircraft using a video terminal and joystick were accident-prone. Outrider can be pre-programmed by a person with no piloting experience. "A field commander won't fly Outrider but will tell it where to go and what to do and then send it on its mission," said John Quinn, Outrider program manager, Alliant Techsystems. "The ground control station is a Windows-based system. The system software will be interoperable and the tactical control station is being developed to control all UAVs," said Quinn.
A combination of the aircraft's design and modified McCollough engine provide the lift, stability and power needed for Outrider to operate from almost anywhere. The dual-wing design provides greater stability and lift at two-thirds the size of equivalent conventional or delta-wing monoplanes. The design also leads to a very mild stall response, making the vehicle highly spin-proof. "Outrider will fly more than 20km with a 23kg payload and then loiter at 60 to 75 knots airspeed for over four hours," said Jerry Rayne, Alliant's vice president of unmanned vehicles.
The system fits inside two HUMVEES and a trailer and can be carried in a C-130 aircraft. Spares to keep the eight-man crew in autonomous operation for 72 hours also are included.
In May 1996, Alliant Techsystems was awarded a two-year advanced technology demonstration (ACTD) contract to deliver six Outrider systems and spares in March 1998. This type of programme represents a new approach to US military contracting that bypasses many of the delays inherent in traditional development programmes. The goal of ACTD programmes is to place systems in the hands of operational users as quickly as possible for demonstration and evaluation. The system and concepts of operation evolve with lessons learned. Controlling costs through the use of commercial off-the-shelf systems is another tenet of the Outrider development programme. Air vehicle cost is projected at US$350,000 at the thirty-third unit and US$300,000 at the one-hundredth unit.
Although military missions will drive UAV development in the near future, entrepreneurs are envisioning a host of commercial applications, including traffic control, border patrol and monitoring of pollution and natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods and fires.
| The Outrider flight plan is generated using a commercial off-the-shelf PC and by simply clicking on the location |
"The original vision of UAVs as a method of gathering critical military intelligence without endangering pilots is turning into a means to gather intelligence for civil and commercial applications," said Rayne. UAV programmes are one of the first testing grounds for the US military's new strategy of using commercial business practices to develop military products. Rayne concluded: "So far UAV seems to be a product that embraces the best of both the military and commercial worlds."
