Military aircraft - UAVs, Drones, Autonomy (2024)

UAVs are aircraft that are guided autonomously, by remote control, or by both means and that carry some combination of sensors, electronic receivers and transmitters, and offensive ordnance. They are used for strategic and operational reconnaissance and for battlefield surveillance, and they can also intervene on the battlefield—either indirectly, by designating targets for precision-guided munitions dropped or fired from manned systems, or directly, by dropping or firing these munitions themselves.

The earliest UAVs were known as remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) or drones. Drones were small radio-controlled aircraft first used during World War II as targets for fighters and antiaircraft guns. They fell into two categories: small, inexpensive, and often expendable vehicles used for training; and, from the 1950s, larger and more sophisticated systems recovered by radio-controlled landing or parachute. The vehicles were typically fitted with reflectors to simulate the radar return of enemy aircraft, and it soon occurred to planners that they might also be used as decoys to help bombers penetrate enemy defenses. (High-performance drones are still developed—for example, to test systems designed to shoot down antiship cruise missiles.)

It also occurred to planners that RPVs could be used for photographic and electronic reconnaissance. One result of this idea was the AQM-34 Firebee, a modification of a standard U.S. target drone built in various versions since about 1951 by the Ryan Aeronautical Company. First flown in 1962, the reconnaissance Firebee saw extensive service in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. It was also used over North Korea and, until rapprochement in 1969, over the People’s Republic of China. A swept-wing, turbojet-powered subsonic vehicle about one-third the size of a jet fighter, the AQM-34 penetrated heavily defended areas at low altitudes with impunity by virtue of its small radar cross section, and it brought back strikingly clear imagery. Firebees fitted with receivers to detect electronic countermeasures returned intelligence about Soviet-built surface-to-air missiles that enabled American engineers to design appropriate detection and jamming equipment.

AQM-34s operated with the limitations of 1960s technology: they carried film cameras, were launched from underwing pylons on a C-130 Hercules transport plane, and were recovered by parachute—snagged from the air by a harness hung from a helicopter. The full advantages of UAVs were to remain unexploited on a large scale until the 1980s, when reliable miniaturized avionics combined with developments in sensors and precision-guided munitions to increase the capabilities of these vehicles dramatically. One critical development was small high-resolution television cameras carried in gimbaled turrets beneath a UAV’s fuselage and remotely controlled via a reliable digital downlink and uplink. Often, the vehicles also carried a laser designator for homing munitions. Global positioning system (GPS) sensors provided precise location information for both the UAVs and their guided munitions. Employing these new technologies, the United States has fielded strategic-range UAVs, using communications satellites to relay control signals and sensor readouts between UAVs and control centres over global distances. For instance, in 2003 Ryan (which had been purchased by Teledyne, Inc., in 1968 and by Northrop Grumman Corp. in 1999) produced the first of a series of RQ-4 Global Hawk UAVs. The Global Hawk is capable of carrying a wide array of optical, infrared, and radar sensors and takes off from and lands on a runway. Its service ceiling of 65,000 feet (20,000 metres), its relatively small size, and the reach of its sensors render it effectively immune to surface-based defensive systems. Prototype Global Hawks were pressed into wartime use over Afghanistan in 2002 and over Iraq as early as 2003. They are currently the most important strategic-range UAVs in service.

The advantages of strategic UAVs notwithstanding, the emergent technologies described above were first exploited in war by Israeli battlefield UAVs. The first of these was the Tadiran Mastiff, a twin-boom aircraft introduced in 1975 that resembled a large model airplane weighing just over 90 kg (200 pounds) with a boxy fuselage and a pusher propeller driven by a small piston engine. It could be catapulted from a truck-mounted ramp, launched by rocket booster, or operated from a runway. The Mastiff and the larger but similar Scout, produced by Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI), proved effective in identifying and locating surface-to-air missiles and marking them for destruction during hostilities in Lebanon in 1982. The U.S. Marine Corps procured the Mastiff, and it followed up this vehicle with the IAI-designed and U.S.-built RQ-2 Pioneer, a slightly larger vehicle with secure up- and downlink. The Pioneer, fielded in 1986, was used by the Marine Corps and Navy in the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army promoted the development of a similar but still larger UAV, the Israeli-designed RQ-5 Hunter, which had a gross weight of 1,600 pounds (720 kg) and was propelled by both pusher and tractor propellers. Although not procured in quantity, Hunters served in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Following the lead of Israel, the United States has aggressively developed UAVs. The most important UAV in operational use is the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, powered by a piston engine driving a pusher propeller. The Predator entered service in 1995 and, after initial problems, developed into a capable surveillance craft carrying a wide variety of optical, infrared, electronic, and radar sensors. The first operational use of armed UAVs involved Predators carrying antitank missiles and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. However, Predators are operated mainly by the U.S. Air Force, often to locate and mark targets for heavily armed fighter-bombers or gunships. Supplementing the MQ-1 is General Atomics’ MQ-9 Reaper, a larger version of the Predator powered by a turboprop engine. The Reaper can carry some 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of ordnance and external fuel and has a significantly higher service ceiling than the Predator. It entered operations over Afghanistan in the autumn of 2007. Predators and Reapers have been purchased by allies of the United States, notably the United Kingdom.

All major military powers and even some militia groups employ battlefield surveillance UAVs to extend the view of ground and naval forces and to enhance the reach and accuracy of their supporting fire. For example, in its conflict with Israel, the Lebanese group Hezbollah has used the Iranian-built Ababil (“Swallow”), a vehicle with a wingspan of 3.25 metres (10 feet 8 inches) that is powered by a pusher propeller and launched either from a truck-mounted pneumatic launcher or by a booster rocket. Tactical surveillance craft range in sophistication from vehicles that, like the Ababil, loiter over battlefields acquiring and designating targets to hand-launched “mini-UAVs” carrying a single visible- or infrared-spectrum television camera. An early example of the latter is the U.S. AeroVironment FQM-151 Pointer, a UAV weighing less than 10 pounds (4.5 kg) and resembling a powered model sailplane. The Pointer first saw service with the U.S. Marine Corps in the Persian Gulf War. It is being replaced by the Puma, a development of the Pointer with more-advanced sensors, by the RQ-11 Raven, a scaled-down version of the Puma, and by the Wasp, a tiny vehicle weighing about 1 pound (less than half a kilogram) with a wingspan of 2 feet 4.5 inches (72 cm); the last is being issued to air force ground combat control teams as well as marines down to the platoon level.

Hovering UAVs have entered service—for example, the U.S. Honeywell RQ-16 T-Hawk, a ducted-fan vehicle weighing 18.5 pounds (8 kg), fielded in 2007 and used to locate improvised explosive devices, and the Russian Kamov Ka-137, a 280-kg (620-pound) helicopter powered by coaxial contrarotating blades and carrying a television camera for border patrol. The much larger Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout, a 3,150-pound (1,420-kg) single-rotor craft resembling an unmanned helicopter, has been operational with the U.S. Navy since 2009; it was first used in anti-drug-smuggling operations off the coasts of the United States.

In 1997 the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began to fund feasibility studies of extremely small “micro UAVs” no larger than 6 inches (15 cm). These studies (and similar studies conducted since 2003 in Israel) have produced a bewildering variety of designs powered by electric motors or tiny gas turbines the size of a watch battery, but no publicly acknowledged use has yet been found for them.

The next wave of UAV development is likely to be so-called uninhabited combat air vehicles (UCAVs). If the experimental Boeing X-45 and Northrop Grumman X-47 are representative of these vehicles, they will resemble small B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and will vary in size from one-third to one-sixth the gross weight of a single-seat fighter-bomber. They will most likely supplement or even replace piloted fighter-bombers in the attack role in high-threat environments. Finally, large, extremely light solar-powered “endurance UAVs” have been flown in order to test the feasibility of communications and surveillance vehicles that would stay on station at high altitude for months or even years at a time.