What exactly are UAVs?

With all this talk about UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), you may be wondering; What exactly is a UAV? What qualifies it to be a UAV airplane, UAV helicopter, Micro UAV, or quad-copter. UAVs are commonly known as drones or an airplane without a pilot on board. The flight of the UAV is controlled primarily autonomously by computers in the UAV or under the remote control of an operator on the ground or in another vehicle. There’s tons of different types of UAVs, including different sizes, shapes, configurations, and characteristics. They are primarily deployed for military applications, however conjointly utilized in a small but growing variety of civil applications, like firefighting and nonmilitary security work, like surveillance of pipelines. UAVs are typically most popular for missions that are too ‘dull, dirty, or dangerous’ for manned craft.

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An example UAV airplane (Barracuda UCAV)
Photo: trdefence.com

In the USA, the U.S. Navy and shortly after the Federal Aviation Administration has adopted the name unmanned aircraft (UA) aircraft craft systems with no flight crew on board. Some other common names include UAV, UAV airplane, drone, remotely piloted vehicle (RPV), remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), remotely operated aircraft (ROA), and for those “limited-size” (as outlined by the FAI) pilotless craft flown within the USA’s National Airspace System, flown alone for recreation and sport functions like models, which are typically flown beneath the voluntary safety standards of the Academy of Model aeronautics, the United States’ national aeromodeling organization. to control a UA for non-recreational functions within the us, users should acquire a Certificate of Authorization (CoA) to work in national airspace. Currently, COAs need a public entity as a sponsor. for instance, once BP needed to watch oil spills, they operated the Aeryon Scout UAV beneath a COA granted to the University of alaska Fairbanks. COAs are granted for each land and shipborne operations.

Because of this general approach UAS are not included within the U.S. Munitions List category VIII – airplanes and Associated equipment. Vice versa, the “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems” are clearly mentioned at paragraph 121-16 Missile Technology control Regime Annex of the U.S. Munitions List. A more in depth explanation is that the Missile Technology control Regime Annex levels rocket and unmanned aerial vehicle systems together.

  Different terms used for defining UAVs include:

  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(s)

  • Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle(s)

  • Uninhabited Aircraft Vehicle

  • Unmanned Air Vehicle

  • Unmanned Airborne Vehicle

  • Unmanned Autonomous Vehicle

  • Unmanned Vehicle

  • Upper Atmosphere Vehicle

The Sikorsky Cypher UAV

The Cypher, a ducted rotor UAV airplane with a composite shroud structure, fly-by-wire controls, integrated aeronautics, and an aboard mission laptop. This UAV is equipped with a range of payloads, like detector packages, with a weight up to forty lbs. The symmetrical, rounded shroud safely encloses the rotor system, and produces a stealthy signature. The vehicle will operate autonomously per a preplanned mission or below communication system via a data-link  Cypher incorporates a hover capability, 3 hour flight endurance, and its high speed of seventy knots permits flights up to twenty five kilometers.

Flight demonstrations of the Cypher technology demonstrator craft were conducted by the sikorsky craft corporation. Intended for military and civil applications. These demonstrations embrace capabilities like ground and armed service police investigation, communications relay and countermeasures missions, non-defense roles as counter-narcotics, ordnance disposal, forestry, utilities, enforcement and search and rescue.

The Cypher UAV is 6.5 feet in diameter. It combines the potency of a ducted airstream with a homocentric advancing blade idea rotor system. The rotors and also the circular shroud that encloses them can share in providing carrying capacity. Powered by a 50-horsepower category engine, Cypher UAVs are able to cruise at eighty knots, for up to 3 hours, with a ceiling of 8,000 feet. Cypher shares each automatic target detection and fly-by-wire control systems with the Boeing industrialist RAH-66 Comanche chopper being developed for the military.

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Cypher UAV
Photo: paper-replika.com

As an autonomous, or “smart” air vehicle, Cypher holds position and navigates employing a differential world Positioning System. The air vehicle is in a position to fly “hands-off,” rather than being flown directly by a ground operator. It additionally showed a capability to land remotely, camera-directed by its aboard tv, on slopes as high as fifteen degrees. Confined space operations showed it kicking off and landing between obstructions even twelve feet apart.

The enclosed rotor idea developed by sikorsky is safer than exposed UAV rotor systems. The Cypher style, with the rotor system within a shroud, minimizes the hazard of exposed high speed rotor blades to ground personnel. The Cypher incorporates composite structures, bearing-less rotors, fly-by-wire flight controls, advanced aeronautics. It works plainly and utilizes a centralized laptop, known as the vehicle mission processor, for execution of flight control laws, vehicle management functions, direction computations, flight payload management and air vehicle communications.

Cypher’s UAV autonomous flight modes are auto take-off and landing, position hover-hold, altitude hold, rate hold, way-point navigation and UAV return-home. Implementation of the return-home mode permits the operator to command the vehicle back to the first launch location – or the other preset location – with simply a push of the button.

The Cypher vehicle is controlled and monitored from an integrated mobile ground station. The whole mission is planned, operated and monitored from one system manager monitor. Vehicle and payload commands, from the system manager, are relayed to the UAV airplane via a digital telemetry transmission. UAV altitude  mission knowledge, surveillance knowledge and payload video are incorporated into one downlink signal that’s transmitted to the management van.

The air vehicle accumulated over four hundred flight hours at Sikorsky’s Development Flight Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., and at various U.S.government demonstrations.

In a demonstration at the Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) site at Fort Benning, Ga., Cypher flew down streets, landed on a building’s roof and strategically placed varying payloads. For the U.S. Army’s Autonomous Rotorcraft Testbed (ASRT) program, Cypher – with no operator input – searched and tracked man-size targets. For the U.S. Department of Energy, Cypher used magnetometers to go looking and find underground structures and tunnels in Nevada. In Sep 1997, Cypher flew at the Army’s Force Protection equipment Demonstration in Virginia.

Other Cypher demonstrations enclosed flights at Indiana’s test bed for detection of loaded ordinance and also the Army personnel college at Fort McClellan, Ala., wherever the UAV took part during a drug interdiction exercise.

The multi-use Security and surveillance Mission Platform (MSSMP), started in FY’92 because the Air-Mobile Ground Security and closed-circuit television (AMGSSS), was intended to produce a fast deployable, extended-range police investigation capability for a range of operations and missions, including: readying, force protection, plan of action security, support to counter-drug and patrol operations, signal/communications relays, detection and assessment of barriers (i.e., mine fields, tank traps), remote assessment of suspected contaminated areas (i.e., chemical, biological, and nuclear), and even resupply of little quantities of crucial things. The MSSMP system consists of 3 air-mobile remote sensing packages and a base station.

The MSSMP detector packages could operate as transportable complete units, or from air-mobile platforms. the present style of the air-mobile platforms is based on the Sikorsky Cypher enclosed-rotor vertical-take-off-and-landing Unmanned air vehicle. This air-mobile platform carries its detector package from one ground surveillance location to a different, up to ten kilometre from the original station.

A portable mission payload Beta package was developed by a team of SSC engineers and scientists, and a further payload package was integrated onto the Cypher vehicle by Sikorsky and SSC engineers. In May 1996, the system was successfully shown at the military college at ft. McClellan, AL, during a simulated counter-drug operation. The portable detector package mounted on a ground vehicle-of-opportunity and also the Cypher-mounted detector package were both operated at the same time over a similar radio network.

In January 1997, the MSSMP system’s continued role was shown during Military Operation in Urban areas situation at the Dismounted Battlespace Battle Laboratory, Ft. Benning, Georgia. The system showed reconnaissance support with the vehicle flying down town streets, searching through upper- and lower-story windows, providing lookout support prior to advancing troops, and performing observations when landing on the roof of a 2 story building. The vehicle additionally dropped a simulated radio relay on the highest of a building, a miniature intrusion detector in an open field, and carried a customary Army optical device rangefinder/designator as a payload.

The AMGSSS idea grew from NRaD’s expertise with the ground Air Telerobotic System (GATERS) program, initiated in 1986 by the United States Marine Corps. NRaD (then the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC)) was the principle development agent on the system. GATERS consisted of a land-based, Tele-Operated Vehicle (TOV) and the Airborne Remotely Operated Device (AROD). The TOV was developed to perform remote reconnaissance/surveillance with fire and target designation/ranging capabilities. The TOV supported a High-Mobility-Multi-Wheeled-Vehicle (HMMWV) platform while AROD provided mobile intelligence reconnaissance. The TOV used a fiber-optic communications link to produce the required bandwidth in non-line-of-sight operations. The military users did not need to be encumbered with the fiber-optic tethers and preferred that one operator be able to supervise many remote systems.

The AROD was a ducted fan VTOL air vehicle that would easily translate through the air and supply aerial surveillance. The AROD was controlled from a mobile ground control station over a fiber-optic data-link, with a radio link as a back up. AROD had shorter flight endurance and payload capabilities. The AMGSSS idea marries the fast quality and low-data-rate management aspects of VTOL platforms with the long endurance reconnaissance capabilities of the unmanned ground vehicles.

UAVs with lasers as weapons coming sooner than you might think!

UAV’s using lasers as a weapon, seems ridiculous and undeveloped right? Wrong. I read some interesting information today about how the major UAV airplane manufacturer General Atomics has been working hard on developing a high powered laser to stop incoming missiles and airplanes with nearly unlimited ammo. Striking at the speed of light the High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS) could cause some serious changes in the way we use our UAVs in the air today. In the past four years the Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA) has given contractor General Atomics $60 million to develop the program. This laser will boast a powerful 150kW ray capable of doing some serious damage.
concept uav
Concept of laser weapons used by UAVs
Photo: fastcompany.com
Currently lasers of that strength are too large and heavy to be carried on planes, but are still able to destroy an incoming rocket or plane. This means they can only be outfitted to work on stationary systems as opposed to a moving UAV airplane that needs to be light weight. DARPA says the laser is in the “final development stage,” and has reduced weight at only 750kg. This opens up a whole new array of uses for lasers as weapons. The use of the laser for my concern is with UAVs. These lasers could bring forth a brand new fighting technique and revolutionize the battlefield, again. General Atomics expects the lasers use to be multiplied by using it with their newer Predator drone.
General Atomics believes that the most useful technique for the drones with the laser capability is to fly in a large “swarm.” The units will be integrated to overcome even large defense networks with the only loss to be a few relatively inexpensive drones. These bold claims do of course need to be weighed with other reservations but the outlook is currently very positive. The US Air Force sees drones as crucial to the future but whether or not the Predator will be the drone to do it is still under speculation due to the fact that neither the laser or drone are in mass production yet. Currently Russia, Israel, and other leading nations and arms manufacturers say they are working on their own version of the similar portable lasers, but the US is currently in the lead for developing advanced laser equipped UAVs.

Mariner unmanned aerial vehicle

From my previous posts I’ve shared with you the information of the Predator UAV class. Today I will bring you a variant of the Predator called the Mariner unmanned aerial vehicle. The mariner is a highly successful UAV airplane intended for use as a long endurance maritime and border surveillance missions. This variant can be equipped with extra fuel allowing it to fly on long missions up to 49 hours. That’s 2 whole days, no human would be able to sit in a plane for that long and keep sane. With the ability to carry 800 pounds of internal payloads the mariner also has the ability to carry external payloads up 3,800 pounds providing for multiple missions able to be accomplished from a single UAV. 

mariner uav
Mariner UAV
Photo: dsto.defence.gov.au
The Mariner UAV airplane is designed to meet the standards of the U.S. Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance program (BAMS) since it can provide instantaneous data directly to the system for target tracking and regular maritime surveillance. The Mariner UAV airplane is a top choice for homeland security due to its reliability and cost-effectiveness. The wingspan of this UAV is 88ft with the length at 36ft. It is designed to operate at a ceiling of 50,000ft and a maximum airspeed of 230kts. The predator has moved from a concept to being able to transform into a UAV with the ability to provide surveillance for 49 hours straight, that’s a huge advance in technology and I can’t wait to see what’s to come in the future!

Silverfox UAV (BAE systems)

I promised you some information on BAE systems Silver Fox UAV airplane and today I bring it to you! This UAV is capable of autonomous aerial surveillance imaging at a cost effective price. With the ability to carry sensor payloads of four pounds and being able to transmit real time video images directly to a ground station; this unmanned system has a lot going for it! A single ground station can operate up to ten units. The Silver Fox unmanned airplane system was originally developed by Advanced Ceramics Research and was later purchased by BAE in 2009. The airplane is powered by a gas/electric system and weighs about 30lbs. It has the ability to carry infrared and electro-optical systems giving it the capability to provide full-motion imagery for 24 hour surveillance. The UAV carries small payloads performs fully autonomous take-offs and landings. Supporting military operations for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance this UAV can do much more than one task.
bae systems
A Silver Fox UAV on a launching platform
Photo: baesystems.com
The Silver Fox is made of a modular structure and is powered by a small model airplane piston engine. The airframe has the ability to be equipped with wings of various sizes. This allows it to trade duration and payload weight for speed or weight carrying capacity. Normally launched by hand this UAV airplane also has the ability to be launched by a compressed-air launcher. GPS navigation is used to make this UAV airplane to fly full-autonomous missions of up to ten hours. The mission is pre-planned using the laptop computer employed in the ground control station. The GCS has a limitation due to its data-link being line-of-sight but ranges up to 20nm are possible. A typical altitude for the Silver Fox to fly its mission at is 500-1200ft above the ground. Ceiling limitation for the unmanned airplane is about 12,000 feet. Currently sensors for video imaging are equipped but with a payload capacity of 4 pounds anything is possible.
bae silver fox
Silver Fox UAV in flight
Photo: baesystems.com
Development of this unmanned airplane is still continuing, mainly in the field of new sensors to be used with the system. Sensors can include biological and chemical agent detectors. Another sensor being tested is an improved camera system with automatic recording capabilities, swiveling, and improved zoom abilities. When data recording is enabled the Silver Fox is expected to be able to fly automatic missions of up to 180 miles. The latest information I’ve found says that the new flight control system supports a fully autonomous “convoy reconnaissance” mode. In this mode the UAV automatically flies ahead of a control vehicle in the convoy. With future improvements including a diesel engine, the flight time could be increased all the way up to 20 hours.