European Leaders Push for Early Deployment of UAVs in Civil Airspace
A recent European Commission-sponsored study lists border security as the top civilian requirement for UAVs. Suitable unmanned aircraft for border protection cannot be simply military versions without weapons. Border protection UAVs require specific hardware and design features to enable them to share airspace with piloted aircraft, or even other UAVs. The new research report details these requirements. It also provides a detailed border protection Operating Concept, or the integrated plan tying UAVs into other sensors, communication networks and multiple users. Without a good Operating Concept, successful deployment of UAVs for border security (or anything else) is unlikely.
According to the new report, UAVs will need to incorporate one of two additional technologies to blend with other aircraft. These technologies vary by UAV weight; one is required on the larger aircraft while the other is only sufficient for the smaller types. The report details both options to help prepare UAV operators for flight in civil airspace.
Current administrative and operational restrictions severely limit the conditions under which piloted air traffic can share the same airspace with pilot-less flights. Essentially, they must be separated by many kilometers horizontally and at all altitudes. In other words, UAVs are not allowed near other aircraft in any direction. The European vision of an unmanned border-guard-in-the-sky may yet run into additional political, administrative and legal difficulties, bringing about further postponement of the UAVs’ deployment date. Analysts predict that political resistance by the public and very conservative airspace managers to such a move may be overcome only if Europe’s sense of vulnerability to an external threat is heightened by, for example, a terrorist attack that illegally crosses the Union’s border.
This new research report provides analysis and then forecasts the world’s UAVs for border protection market under two different scenarios: today’s steady tension and after a significant terror attack that crosses a developed nation’s border.
The first scenario assumes the current steady tension in the developed world. Terrorism is a constant, but not immediate, threat.
The second scenario assumes another 9/11 level attack, this time across a developed nation’s border in 2012. Politically, such an attack would change the region’s sense of vulnerability and its security priorities. Terrorism would become, again, a pressing, national security problem of the highest order. Part of the response would be an immediate demand to patrol borders with UAVs, a demand that would require opening the region’s airspace to unmanned aircraft by removing today’s severe limits under which such flights can take place only occasionally.
The new report includes task-specific analysis of border security issues, along with a detailed presentation of business opportunities that can help vendors and operators make the most out of these emerging markets. The report specifically addresses the list of coordinated capabilities border agents say they need, a list very similar to that developed by US ground forces after years of UAV experience in combat. Delivering these capabilities to new UAV markets promises to accelerate their growth. Those new markets come at an opportune time given that US defense spending on UAVs will not increase for the next five years.
The report concludes that UAV vendors must approach potential users (many of whom have no UAV experience) with the right Operating Concept and the right mix of properly-sized and properly-equipped UAVs. If vendors rely on military versions of current UAVs, they will be shut out.
By Ed Herlik
Find more information: http://www.asdreports.com/info.asp?id=3184
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