The Power of the Unmanned
Small, Sophisticated Unmanned
Platforms are Pushing Boundaries
and Delivering Remarkable Results.
by Peter A. Buxbaum
The U.S. military has also picked up the small UAV mantle for its overseas operations. Special operations forces have developed requirements for small UAVs, primarily for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and have deployed them from the deserts of Iraq to the mountains of Afghanistan. Capabilities of small UAVs are constantly being enhanced, potentially expanding their future uses to include communications relay and target neutralization, and providing them with more on-board processing power for greater autonomy of action.
Small UAVs range in size from the small to the mini to the micro, with future developments aiming at the nano scale. Larger systems weigh as much as 900 pounds, requiring a vehicle for transport and takeoff. Smaller systems are toteable in two backpacks, can be assembled in a few minutes, and can be launched by hand. Micro UAVs are designed to be operated by a single soldier. What all have in common is the mission to provide capabilities to small teams of front-line personnel.
AeroVironment Inc., a developer of UAV systems and other technologies based in Monrovia, Calif., first introduced a small UAV called the Pointer 20 years ago and sold it to the U.S. Marine Corps. But it was only in the post-9/11 world that the capabilities of small UAVs came to be recognized, according to Steve Gitlin, the company’s director of marketing strategy.
“The threat environment that continues to this day gave rise to increased demand for our solutions,” he said.
AeroVironment currently has two small UAV models in production, both of which are being or will be acquired across all the U.S. armed services. The progression from the Raven, with acquisitions being managed by the U.S. Army, to the Wasp III, which is being managed by the Air Force Special Operations Command, illustrates a key trend to make small UAVs ever more compact.
The Raven weighs a little over four pounds and has a wingspan just short of five feet. The vehicle is laden with an electro-optical or thermal payload and its electric motor runs on a battery pack that keeps the unit aloft for 90 minutes at a time. The Raven system, to include its ground controller, fits into two rucksacks and weighs less than 15 pounds. The Wasp, which is scheduled to become operational later this year, offers comparable, although somewhat lesser, capabilities to the Raven, with an endurance time of 60 minutes, but in a vehicle with a 29-inch wingspan that weighs one pound.
“Technology is moving along at a rapid pace,” said Stephen Flach, vice president and director for small unmanned aircraft, at AAI Corp., a UAV maker in Hunt Valley, Md. “There has been reduction in size, weight and power enabling more sophisticated payloads and better capabilities to be brought to bear on smaller aircraft.”
The enthusiasm for smaller vehicles, even for special operations applications, is not embraced universally by all UAV manufacturers. “What is most important from a special operations point of view is to get all the ISR information the unit needs,” said Uzzi Rozzen, president and CEO of Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) North America and a former Israel Air Force pilot. “The vehicle must be very user friendly and the noise and visual signatures must be very low otherwise it is not good for special operations. It is not the size of the vehicle that is important. You can have a UAV that weighs 100 pounds that can have a life cycle cost lower than a micro UAV.” Nevertheless, IAI markets a range of small UAVs down to the one-pound micro level.
But Flach notes that “the smaller the vehicle, the more covert you become in your capabilities.” That rationale, together with the practical consideration of reducing the physical strain on special operations personnel, makes Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Todd Hanning, who manages small UAV programs at AFSOC, enthusiastic about the miniaturization of unmanned aerial systems. Smaller systems can be used by very small teams of operators, right down to the platoon level, he noted. Also of interest to Hanning is the Wasp III’s far lower unit cost—less than one-third that of the Raven.
“Any time you have a small team in an urban environment, a mountainous terrain, or out in the desert, you want to be able to pull out the UAV, throw it up,and assess the situation in the next village, over the next ridge, or past a clump of trees,” Hanning said. “You want to get eyes on what is up ahead before you progress.”
The small UAV category also includes larger systems, such IAI’s I-View family, a series of systems with maximum takeoff weights that range from 130 to 880 pounds and wingspans from thirteen to 23 feet. IAI, which has sold some of its larger UAV systems to the Department of Defense, is marketing, but has not yet sold, its smaller systems to the U.S. military.
The I-View uses piston engines which are over-powered for the size of the vehicle so that the unit can fly mostly in idle with little power from the engine. The bird is also equipped with a parafoil which is used mainly for landing, but which also reduces the vehicle’s noisesignature during nighttime by allowing it to glide over targets.
“I-View must be mounted on a vehicle and operated by two or three soldiers,” noted Rozzen. “I-View is a high-end product but not necessarily with the highest life cycle costs for special operations. It is the best of product they can get from the point of sensors, cameras and area of coverage.” The vehicle can fly as low as a few hundred feet or as high as 15 or 18 thousand feet.
By contrast, IAI’s Bird Eye 400 system is portable, is powered electrically, and appears to be a bird from the ground. “Even real birds fly in formation with this UAV because the birds think this is a bird,” said Rozzen. The Bird Eye 400 weighs 12 pounds and has a wingspan of seven feet. It flies at up to 1,000 feet and will soon be equipped to fly for three hours at a clip. Both the I-View and the Bird Eye, as well as IAI’s micro UAV, the Mosquito, all operate off the same command and control system.
Recent developments in small UAVs include equipping the vehicles with increased processing power on board in order to facilitate greater navigational autonomy and to reduce the amount of data filtering that needs to take place on the ground. Prioria Robotics Inc., a five-year-old company based in Gainesville, Fla., earlier this year introduced an updated version of its micro unmanned aerial system, Maveric, a single-person portable system equipped with Prioria’s processing platform Merlin.
Maveric’s wingspan is 28 inches; it weighs about 2 pounds, and is equipped with a forward and gimbaled two-camera configuration. The U.S. Army has purchased several of the new Maveric units for evaluation.
“Merlin provides Maveric with onboard collision avoidance capabilities,” explained Bryan da Frota, the company’s CEO. “The vehicle automatically looks for and finds a safe altitude in mountainous terrains, sloping elevations, or urban settings with buildings or trees.” The enhanced processing capabilities also allow the aircraft to transmit smoother images back to the ground. “What the ground controller sees is a nice pristine image,” said da Frota. “That means the ground station doesn’t have to be that robust. It doesn’t have to crunch a huge amount of data to make a better image.”
Maveric is equipped with bendable, carbon fiber wings, allowing it to be stored in a six-inch tube and deployed in less than two minutes with no assembly. “When you are worrying about bad guys you don’t want have to babysit a piece of technology,” said da Frota.
Future developments in small UAVs will likely include the accommodation of payloads with capabilities that go beyond today’s typical electrooptical cameras. “We are evaluating the use of the vehicles beyond the standard reconnaissance mission to include a radio relay mission,” said AAI’s Flach. “This could be important for special operations units that find themselves in remote areas where it is difficult to maintain communications.”
In such a scenario the UAV payload would include antennas and transmitters that could capture transmissions from satellite or ground communications systems and forward them on to the special ops unit or to another UAV within range of the unit.
At this point communications payloads are too large and heavy to carried by smaller UAVs, however. “The technology is there but it is not yet mature enough,” said IAI’s Rozzen. “There are research and development efforts ongoing.”
For Rozzen, it would be smarter not to rely on small UAVs for communications relay functions in the first place. “We would suggest they use much bigger platforms launched from someplace else that can stay in the air for 40 hours and provide special operations forces with relays of six to eight channels at the same time,” he said.
Another potential future development for small UAVs is the weaponization of the platforms. AeroVironment’s Switchblade development project introduces the element of lethality to the concept of the small portable unmanned aircraft system. The wings fold into the body of the aircraft and the unit is slipped into a tube and launched from the tube much like a mortar. Once the aircraft is launched, its legs swivel into place, its wings pop out, and its propeller engages. Switchblade will utilize the same ground controller system as AV’s Raven and Wasp.
“The controller, once he identifies a target, marks it and tells the aircraft toengage,” explained Gitlin. “The aircraft is designed to then fly into the target at a high rate of speed and to detonate a small high-explosive charge upon impact to take out the target.
“The system is designed for minimal collateral damage,” he added. “You could potentially target a single person standing on the balcony of an apartment building and neutralize that target without destroying the rest of the building.”
IAI is developing a new family of small UAVs that combine the high-end payload capabilities of the I-View family with the portability of the Bird Eye. “It will be based on electric engines and is equipped with a next-generation payload,” said Rozzen. “It will provide the same performance as the I-View family on a smaller aircraft able to be carried by soldiers. In the near future, the market will see our platform with a 45 to 55 pound maximum takeoff weight and portable by soldiers.”
AeroVironment is also working on a new size of unmanned air vehicle, this one in the nano category. The company announced earlier this year it has been awarded a Phase II contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to design and build a flying prototype for the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) program.
“The NAV program was initiated to develop a new class of air vehicles capable of indoor and outdoor operations,” said Gitlin. “It will employ biological mimicry to look like an object in nature. The aircraft is designed to provide new military reconnaissance capabilities in urban environments.” AV’s NAV is designed to weigh no more than 10 grams and have the ability to carry a payload of up to two grams.
That is a development anticipated favorably by AFSOC’s Hanning. “It won’t have a lot of endurance,” he said, “but it will be great for situations where units need instantaneous situational awareness right over the top of some obstruction. A ground operator could simply reach into his pocket and throw it up for a quick assessment of the current location. It’s not something you would deploy 10 kilometers away, but it will be small, easy to carry, and will not have to be assembled before launching.
“We have no timeline for acquisition of this capability right now,” Hanning concluded. “Industry and independent researchers are aware of our interest and are working on it. The solutions are just not quite there yet, but they are getting closer, and they should become realities very soon.” ♦