Many industry watchers anticipate that as the number of UAV missions increase, so will the need for greater capabilities, larger fleets and ever-higher bandwidth requirements to support the military’s ISR needs. “Remotely piloted aircraft today are a big part of the Air Force’s airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission,” says Col. Charles Cynamon, chief of the MilSatCom Advanced Concepts Division. His division, part of the Space and Missile Systems Center, is charged with developing the future satellite communications architecture that will ensure the continued connectivity of the Air Force’s remote assets as they are transitioned to military frequencies. Today, remotely piloted aircraft rely typically on narrow-band satellite communications for command and control — most often UHF-band or L-band — when they are beyond line of sight. Sensor data relay, on the other hand, is almost exclusively reliant on Ku-band communications and mostly commercially-based Ku-band satcom.” Cynamon hopes to change that reliance for good reason. “There are two elements of concern. One is the cost to lease that capability and there is a limited supply of Ku-band satcom. The other thing is that the data rates and throughput you can get through sensor data is then limited by the size of transponders you can lease from the commercial community. “
 

He points out that platforms like Global Hawk and future upgrades will have significantly higher data requirements than a typical transponder from the commercial market. Cynamon says that his group is planning for data rates similar to those on the Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) system. “One of the things we are looking at is the capabilities WGS would need to have to accommodate an upgraded Global Hawk with a military Ka-band terminal on it,” he says. “We’re looking at the number of apertures we would need to have to cover these long-endurance missions.” Cynamon insists that the commercial satellite sector will have a role to play due to the massive bandwidth requirements that remotely piloted aircraft will demand in the future. The Space and Missile Systems Center recently awarded several contracts to satellite manufacturing firms such as Boeing and Orbital Sciences to explore if there are other alternatives for providing coverage to remotely piloted aircraft other than upgrading WGS.

 

The versatility and persistence of these remotely piloted aircraft are well proven, as seen by the growth in the number of flight hours per mission and sheer number of systems. According to NSR, which has been tracking the UAV market for seven years, the number of aircraft has more than doubled from 500 to 1,000, and the average number of flight hours per mission has increased from 5,000 in 1996 to 109,000 hours in 2005.  
 

The U.S. Department of Defense published in its Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap that as of October 2008, coalition unmanned aircraft systems (hand-launched) have flown 500,000 flight hours in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In April 2010, the Predator series, the “flagship” family of the military’s fleet of remotely piloted aircraft, surpassed 1 million flight hours. To date, more than 470 Predator series of aircraft have been delivered to U.S. and allied forces, with active aircraft clocking more than 35,000 hours a month, says Christopher Ames, director of strategic development for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. “Every second of every day there are more than 50 of our aircraft airborne worldwide. Clearly, the value of unmanned aircraft systems has blossomed tremendously in the last several years. They are true game changers in the military sense and are proving equally valuable in non-military missions,” says Ames, a retired Naval rear admiral and pilot who joined General Atomics in 2006 after retiring from military service. 
 

“If you look at the number of UAVs for pure surveillance and look at the mission in Afghanistan, it’s grown in terms of mission, in terms of importance and in terms of budget,” says Jose del Rosario, senior analyst with NSR. He believes during the next 10 years, UAVs will become smaller relative to current-sized Predators and will be able to carry heavier payloads and accommodate smaller and lower profile satellite antennas.
 

Claude Rousseau, another NSR analyst, foresees UAVs being a necessity not only in open conflicts but also as allied forces pull out of hotspots. “There will be more need for UAVs than ever before to continue surveying the area, but also the local authorities will use it as a tool for military and civil applications,” he says.

The U.S. has already seen the utility of these remotely piloted aircraft for civil and emergency response needs. According to Ames, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has relied on the Predator B aircraft to patrol U.S. borders since 2005. They also provide maritime surveillance over the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean and will soon expand their reach to the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines. “They’re a dominant force on the border,” he says. Within disaster relief operations, these aircraft provide needed reconnaissance following flooding and earthquakes.  Airborne firefighting aircraft use data from unmanned aircraft to know where to direct their finite resources to battle forest fires.  
 

NSR forecasts that UAV units will grow from 870 units in 2009 to more than 3,100 in-service units in 2019, representing a compound annual growth rate of 13.2 percent. Some 230 units will be added to government fleets each year. NSR’s assessment is consistent with the U.S. military budget for 2012, which includes a five-year cost-cutting plan that will divert about $70 billion back into new purchases over the next five years with a focus on adding additional UAVs to its arsenal. 

 

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