Product Description
This important military document presents the Department of Defense’s roadmap for developing and employing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) over the next 25 years (2002 to 2027). DoD’s operational UAV systems include Predator, Hunter, Shadow, and Pioneer which have demonstrated tremendous capability in recent military operations. Developmental systems such as Global Hawk and many small UAV systems have also been put to the test in recent combat and combat support operations. Taken as a whole, this technology area offers profound opportunities to transform the manner in which this country conducts a wide array of military and military support operations. As with any new technology, there is naturally some reluctance to transition to a radically new capability. The need to fully demonstrate UAVs in combat and realistic training environments is critical to the migration of this technology. The overarching goal of this roadmap, in concert with the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), is to define clear direction to the Services and Departments for a logical, systematic migration of mission capabilities to a new class of military tools. The goal is to address the most urgent mission needs that are supported both technologically and operationally by various UAV systems. Some missions can be supported by the current state of the art in unmanned technology where the capabilities of current or near-term DoD assets are sufficient and the risk to DoD members is relative low. Other mission areas, however, are in desperate need of additional capability and present high risk to aircraft crews. These mission areas, highlighted in this roadmap, will receive significant near-term effort by the Department. This Roadmap describes the Services’ ongoing UAV efforts (Section 2) and identifies the capabilities needed by theater commanders to which UAVs could be applied (Section 3), then couples them to emerging technologies (Section 4) and operational concepts (Section 5) that could enable these capabilities within the Services’ programs. The resulting Roadmap (Section 6) links capability-enhancing technologies to the life cycles of current and projected UAV programs. It is a map of opportunities, not point designs - a description of the future potential of UAVs. This Roadmap also provides a current snapshot of the status of the Department’s numerous unmanned aviation efforts. There are over 100 detailed illustrations, charts, graphs, photographs, and tables; the document was issued in December 2002.

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

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