Budget cuts force army unmanned aviation to make do with what it has.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

As defense budgets decline, the Army intends to stand pat with four basic unmanned aerial vehicle models, officials said at a recent conference.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars saw both a UAV buying binge and the rapid adoption of drones into Army operations. So much so, they are now considered an integral part of the way the service fights.

"It is already woven into the fabric of Army aviation," said Col. Pat Tierney, director of the service's aviation directorate.

Aside from completing its fleet of new Gray Eagle medium-altitude, long-endurance drones, there are no new Army unpiloted aircraft under development. Vendors will have to content themselves with helping the Army upgrade its current models, said Lt. Col. Mark Colbrook, G-3 Aviation unmanned aerial systems division chief.

"We are not going to be replacing the vehicles ... at least not in the next year or two," he said at the Army Aviation Association of America unmanned aircraft systems forum in Arlington, Va. The service, however, will be looking to improve the sensors and other payloads that go aboard the aircraft as well as boost their performance in the air.

Army aviation officials at the conference had two basic messages: costs must come down; and the service must retain control of its UAS operations.

The latter is a point that Army officials find themselves having to repeat. A turf battle between it and the Air Force over who should operate unmanned systems in the skies over battlefields had been fought and won in the latter half of the previous decade.

Tierney admitted that the old debate was back, but this time it is being driven by the budget climate. Members of Congress look at the new Gray Eagle, and the Air Force's Reaper and Predator, see similar aircraft, and wonder if it would be less expensive to let the Air Force do all the flying.

The office of the secretary of defense understands that the Army needs its own UAVs. But lawmakers don't fully understand this. There are efforts "to limit us," he added. "We have got to go back up to the Hill and explain what it is we do with this system," he said. UAVs have the potential to sharply decrease the amount of time needed to fly more expensive helicopters, but not all lawmakers understand those potential cost-saving benefits, he said.

The Army wants to control its own UAVs "organically." In other words, its operators are embedded inside the units they are serving, whether they are divisions for the Gray Eagle, Shadows in...