Unmanned aircraft 'roadmap' reflects changing priorities.

• Author: Pappalardo, Joe
• Position: Unmanned aircraft systems

The Defense Department is dispensing with the descriptive "unmanned aerial vehicles," in favor of a new term: unmanned aircraft systems. Officials assert this name change reflects the increasingly complex nature of unmanned-aircraft programs, which not only include airframes, but also ground-control stations, sensor suites and communications devices.

More attention needs to be paid to the technology supporting the air vehicles, said Dyke Weatherington, deputy of the UAS planning task force at the office of the secretary of defense.

The Pentagon's latest unmanned-systems roadmap, expected to be published this month, will shape future buys and the development of military tactics, he said at a conference sponsored by the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. "This document will have a big significance on the quadrennial defense review we're about to start."

Real world lessons are driving requirements, he said. Unmanned vehicles currently in operation in Iraq and Afghanistan were "designed as an ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) system, not for direct targeting support. Yet that's what we're doing today," Weatherington said. "Not all the data is there that the users need."

Communications have received their own appendix in this roadmap, he said. The need to get real-time information to interested parties at multiple command levels has prompted a requirement for standard interfaces, which permits easier data sharing.

Refinements on older sensors, and using new ones, are included in military plans. A prototype of a high-definition television camera is being built, for use in target identification and tracking. Much of the UAS work is being field tested in Iraq and Afghanistan, Weatherington said. One currently deployed system that shows promise is the Lynx radar that was designed and developed by Sandia National Laboratories for reconnaissance and surveillance in adverse weather conditions.

New technologies must be developed that give a broad area perspective in detail, and in real time, Weatherington said. Advances in collecting signals intelligence will be also explored, he pointed out.

There is also a need to integrate dissimilar sensors to provide the many different players all pertinent battlefield information. "We are finding increasingly that a single sensor looking at a single target may not be able to provide a war fighter all that he needs," Weatherington said.

There also is a growing interest in...