FLUG REVUE August 2005: UCAVs will play big role in the future

August 2005

UAVS AND UCAVS ARE COMING

By Volker K. Thomalla

On the opening day of the Paris Air Show no less a figure than France's President Jacques Chirac unveiled the 1:1 model of Neuron, an unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) demonstrator that is being developed as a collaborative European programme under the industrial lead of Dassault Aviation. The fact that the project was unveiled by the President is indicative of the high degree of importance attached to it by the politicians and of the new perception amongst the armed forces and aerospace industry of the benefits that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can offer. Today's UAVs are brimming with high-technology and have evolved from inexpensive consumables to valuable sensor platforms. We can expect that in the next decade they will be routinely deployed as powerful combat airborne assets covering many missions that today can only be performed by manned combat aircraft. In this respect Neuron will play an important role on this side of the Atlantic.

Modern armed forces are tightly networked and, under the new netcentric warfare concept, and the scenarios are that a large proportion of combat missions would no longer be conducted from the cockpit of an aircraft, but from a swivel chair in front of a computer screen in a well protected command HQ. The American armed forces are already demonstrating this in Iraq: 55 percent of all target designations in the Iraq war came from unmanned air vehicles.

UAVs and UCAVs have attained a diversity of types that was never thought possible in the past. They come in all sizes, from the dimensions of a model plane to those of a regional aircraft. Industry experts believe there are currently some 400 different UAVs and UCAVs around in the world at present. They have already become an indispensable feature of military operations and fulfil a broad variety of tasks ranging from the classic aerial reconnaissance through to precision attacks with missiles.

The question which suggests itself in this context is this: if unmanned platforms can fulfil highly complex military missions extremely reliably, could this technology not also be used for civil applications, for example, for short-range regional flights? To the engineers the answer is simple: yes, from the technological point of view the use of an automated passenger aircraft no longer poses major challenges. But this answer is simplistic, even if the odd airline CEO might relish the thought of cutting pilots from the monthly payroll. The critical question in this connection is much more, “Would passengers accept being flown in a passenger drone?” Definitely not, at least not yet today. What the future generation of passengers, who have taken computers for granted since their early childhood might say on the issue in 20 years' time, no one can predict today.

From page 4 of FLUG REVUE 8/2005

Last updated 15 July 2005

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