Unmanned Aircraft Attract New Interest From Pentagon.

A U.S. Marine stretched a 20-foot bungee cord as far as it would go and released it, launching a 4-pound Dragon Eye unmanned reconnaissance aircraft. Instead of taking to the air, however, the tiny plane--which fits into a backpack--flew straight into the grass.

Unfazed, the Marine simply dusted off the Dragon Eye, and the team launched it again. This time, the tiny aircraft soared up, into the sky, and performed as expected, circling the field, filming and transmitting live video images to a large screen on the ground below.

"One advantage of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) is that you can have a rough landing and not damage it," Marine Maj. John Cane, from the Marine Warfighting Laboratory, based in Quantico, Va., told an estimated 2,000 spectators at a UAV demonstration in Southern Maryland.

The demonstration featured flights by nine widely different UAVs from all over the United States and as far away as Austria and Japan. They ranged from the hand-launched Dragon Eye, to the 49 foot-wingspanned Predator, to the helicopter-like Camcopter.

The demonstration was conducted earlier this summer at Patuxent Naval Air Station's Webster Field Annex. Webster Field is the headquarters of Fleet Composite Squadron Six Unmanned Air Vehicle Detachment (VC-6 UAV Det), the Navy's only UAV command. The demonstration was co-sponsored by the U.S. Navy and the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), of Arlington, Va.

Manufacturers were eager to show off their products, hoping to take advantage of the Bush administration's undisguised enthusiasm for unmanned systems. "In my judgment," said Navy Secretary Gordon England at an AUVSI symposium in Baltimore, unmanned systems have the same transformational potential as space.

"We already have unmanned systems typically doing the dull, dirty and dangerous activities that humans shun or are unable to perform, and they have generally performed well in these roles."

It is "critical" to move such promising technology as rapidly as possible from research and development to the operational stage, according to Edward C. (Pete) Aldridge Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. One mechanism that has proven successful at taking matured technologies into the field in prototype systems is the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration, or ACTD, he said during a recent congressional budget hearing. Aldridge had particular praise for two products of the ACTD program, the Predator and Global Hawk UAVs.

The Predator is an unmanned surveillance aircraft built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., of San Diego. Conceived in 1994, it was sent to Southwest Asia within a year to acquire and disseminate video imagery to U.S. forces and their coalition partners. Since then, the Predator has been deployed seven times, including five trips to the Balkans, said General Atomics spokesperson Cyndi Wegerbauer. During those assignments, it has accrued more than 24,000 flight hours.

This spring, the U.S. Air Force Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, in Ohio, agreed to buy seven Predators for $39 million and retained options for seven additional aircraft. This brings the total number of Predators to 79 organized in two Air Force squadrons, according to Wegerbauer.

Originally employed as a reconnaissance aircraft, the Predator is configured with a combination of sensors, ranging from electro-optical, infrared cameras to laser target designators. This winter, a Predator successfully launched a "live" Hellfire-C, laser-guided missile that struck and heavily damaged a stationary, unmanned Army tank on the ground at an airfield near Nellis Air Force Base, in Nevada.

Thus, Predators could be used as unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs), replacing traditional fighters and bombers for some missions. Efforts to develop a fleet of UCAVs are picking up speed (See related story).

The Defense Department, meanwhile, is accelerating development of the Air Force's Global Hawk. In its fiscal year 2002 budget request to Congress, the department proposed to more than double spending for Global Hawk, from $143 million in 2001 to $307 million in 2002. This increase will permit the purchase of two of the aircraft from the manufacturer, Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp.

The Air Force plans to buy two each year through 2008 and four per year after that, said Brig. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, director of the service's information dominance programs. Ultimately, he said, the service plans a fleet of 63 Global Hawks.

"The U-2 size, endurance and range of this vehicle is truly remarkable," Obering told the Baltimore conference. Global Hawk can "stand off Manhattan, image the whole island and actually count the people," Obering explained.

With a wingspan of 116 feet--comparable to that of a Boeing 737 airliner--Global Hawk has endurance, Obering said. In recent flights, Global Hawks flew non-stop across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 2000, one made its way from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., to Portugal, completed some radar-imagery tasks and returned to Eglin 28 hours later.

In April of this year, another Global Hawk deployed from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., to Australia for a series of maritime patrol exercises with the Australian air force and navy, in conjunction with the U.S. Navy. In preparation for the Australian deployment, the vehicle flew from Edwards to the equator and back, setting world records for endurance and altitude for autonomous jet-powered UAVs.

The first main operating base for Global Hawk will be Beale Air Force Base, located north of Sacramento, Calif., the service announced in July. Beale is home to the 9 th Reconnaissance Wing, which flies the venerable U-2 high-altitude surveillance aircraft.

Locating Global Hawk with the U-2 mission "ensures that cultural issues associated with transitioning from manned to unmanned reconnaissance are in the hands of our current strategic reconnaissance experts at Beale," said Gen. John P. Jumper, commander of the Air Combat Command and incoming Air Force chief of staff.

One of the biggest cultural issues, according to Obering: "How do you maintain that warrior philosophy without a pilot in the cabin? You've got to get people to buy into the increased safety offered by UAVs."

Unmanned systems are "an opportunity to use technology in place of people," said Lt. Gen. John Riggs, director of the Army chief of staff's Objective Force Task Force.

Also, England said, machines can perform better in some situations than people. For example, he explained, "experience with the F-16 [fighter] has shown that [an acceleration rate of] 9 g's is a practical limit for manned combat aircraft ..." Unmanned systems face no such limitation, giving them potentially greater maneuverability, he said.

In addition, industry officials claimed, the crews that operate most UAVs require much less training than those of manned aircraft. "We typically train people who are very unfamiliar with flying aircraft," said Bob Curtin, vice president of AeroVironment Inc., of Semi Valley, Calif. "They're more comfortable driving tanks or Humvees. But it takes just a few minutes to teach them to fly."

Curtin was at the demonstration showing the FQM-151A Pointer reconnaissance UAV, which his company developed for the Marine Corps. The hand-launched, 20-pound aircraft has been flown by the Marines, Army, Air Force and law enforcement agencies in Europe, Southwest Asia, Australia and the United States. Earlier this year, it received export license approval and has been delivered to the French Armee de Terre.

Some UAVs demonstrated at Webster Field were capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). The circular iSTAR, produced by the San Diego-based Flight Systems Division of Allied Aerospace Industries Inc., resembles a floor fan and comes in versions as small as 6 inches in diameter. With its ability to move about like a tiny helicopter, iSTAR is ideal to perform reconnaissance for small infantry units, according to the firm's UAV program manager, Kerry Fishkeller.

The 95-pound Camcopter--produced by a Washington, D.C.-based subsidiary of Austria's Schiebel Robotics GmbH--is an unmanned helicopter. "It's really simple to use," the vehicle's operator, Michael D, Langness, told National Defense. "You just tell it where to go. Push a button, and it takes off on its own. The same with landing."

Some high-end UAVs require trained pilots at the controls, even though the controls are on the ground, far away from the vehicles, cautioned Obering. Unmanned combat systems have weapons that can do a lot of damage, he said. "They need to be operated by trained combat pilots. That isn't going to change any time soon."

Without a pilot in the cockpit, however, the relatively slow moving UAVs are vulnerable both to computer failures and hostile fire. In late August, for example, a Predator disappeared over southern Iraq. At press time, U.S. troops hadn't been able to determine whether it had been shot down or had simply crashed. Earlier, in July, the Army reported that two Hunter UAVs had crashed in Kosovo.

Robotic Combat Aircraft Get Ready for Test Flights

Encouraged by the performance of unmanned aerial vehicles thus far, Pentagon officials say they are increasingly confident that the vehicles soon will play a combat role.

"Quite likely, we could now be designing our last manned combat aircraft," Navy Secretary Gordon England told a UAV conference in Baltimore. He noted that Virginia's Sen. John Warner, the ranking minority member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has proposed making one third of all deep-strike aircraft unmanned by 2010 and one third of all ground combat vehicles unmanned by 2015.

Two prototypes of possible unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) are being prepared for test flights, beginning as early as this fall.

The Boeing Company's Phantom Works research and development division, of St Louis--working under a $131 million, 42 month cost-share agreement with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Air Force--has built its Y-shaped X-45A. It has a stealthy, tailless, 27-foot-long airframe with a 34-foot wingspan. It weighs 8,000 pounds and can carry a 3,000-pound payload.

The Northrop Grumman Corp., this summer, rolled its kite-shaped X-47A Pegasus out of a hangar in Mojave, Calif. Pegasus, constructed primarily with composite materials and stealthy design features, measures roughly 28 feet square.

Strictly speaking. Pegasus is not a UCAV, Scott J. Seymour, vice president of Northrop's Integrated Systems Sector, told reporters. Instead, it is a company-funded project that will be used to demonstrate the aerodynamic qualities suitable for autonomous operation from an aircraft carrier.

The results of the Pegasus project will be used in Northrop's work to develop a naval UCAV, dubbed UCAV-N. Northrop is working on a prelimnary design for such an aircraft under a $12 million contract with the Navy and DARPA.

The two projects are Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations, designed to use prototypes to test the utility of new technologies. The Air Force UCAV project "will prove that some of the most hazardous missions can be performed effectively by an unmanned vehicle and made operational by 2010, while, at the same time, reducing costs and risk to human life," said Jane A. Alexander, acting DARPA director.

"DARPA firmly believes that the unit-recurring fly-away cost of the UCAV weapon system will be one-third of that of the Joint Strike Fighter and that operations and support costs, compared to a current manned fighter squadron, will be reduced by 75 percent," she told a Senate armed services subcommittee.

Reasons for the savings include the UCAV's small size, lack of an onboard pilot reusability and long-term storage capability, said Brig. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, director of Air Force information dominance programs. "A UCAV can live in a box for up to 10 years until it's needed," he explained. 'Then, you can ship it anywhere."

The Navy, Alexander said, "has a need for sea-based, highly survivable, effective and affordable air power to conduct deep-strike, suppression-of-enemy-air-defenses and surveillance missions as part of an integrate air campaign."

Harold Kennedy