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Aviation History
2002
2002 - 3100.PDF
Unmanned rotorcraft Unmanned combat vehicles are in their infancy, but a US Army/DARPA programme aims to make unmanned rotorcraft the rulers of future battlefields PAUL LEWIS / WASHINGTON DC The Afghanistan conflict has provided a fertile proving ground for new weapons technology, especially in advancing the cause of armed unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). Less than nine months after the first missile firing from the General Atomics RQ-1B Predator against the Taliban, the US Army, in partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), kick-started the Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) programme. Four competing indus try teams have been awarded concept devel opment contracts that may open the door to the most far-reaching advance in army aviation since the helicopter made its com bat debut in the Korean War more than 50 years ago. From DARPA's narrow technology per spective, the UCAR represents the next evolution in UAV capability, building on the ability of the Northrop Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawk to fly autonomously from point to point to develop a system of systems that will plug into the army's UCAR PROGRAMME SCHEDULE Objective Force of tomorrow. The UCAR programme, furthermore, is an extension of the DARPA/US Air Force Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) programme, with its focus of proving single operator and multiple vehicle operations; and the DARPA/US Navy's planned naval UCAV-N demonstration, with the added complexity of shipboard launch and recovery. Next level "UCAR goes to the next level in that it will have to operate in an environment that is much more complex than either Global Hawks or UCAVs in that we envisage them operating in the low-altitude environment typical to the army," says Don Woodbury, DARPA UCAR programme manager. The vehicle will not only have to prove its bat tlefield survivability. To past muster with the army warfighters, a UCAR will need to demonstrate interoperability with other manned and unmanned assets on the ground and in the air, be affordable to operate as well as to buy, be autonomous in mission planing and collaborative oper- . Phase I • Concept development and system trades • System requirement review/downselect Preliminary design • Preliminary design review/downselect System development • First flight, air vehicle 1 FLIGHT TIM BROWN S002 • Critical design review Technology maturation activities Phase IV System maturation Third flight, air vehicle 3 Transition Source: DARPA Army tech base ations and prove lethal in its ability to identify and destroy targets in real time. The US Army is taking a conservative approach to fielding a UCAR, assuming DARPA can prove that the technology works and is of operational value. The army, anxious not to undermine the S6.6 billion being pumped into development of the tandem-seat Boeing Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche helicopter, views armed UAVs in the near term as adjuncts to manned sys tems; in the mid-term as semi-autonomous assets working to pre-determined algo rithms; and in the long-term as vehicles per forming autonomous missions from start to finish - but not before 2020-25 and not without human oversight. Col Waldo Carmona, commander of the US Army's Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD), says: "The challenge from a technology standpoint is going to be autonomy. Everybody says 'fully autonomous' very cavalierly, which really means the ability to execute a mission with out any input from anyone, make decisions, learn from your environment and then decide what to do considering the environ ment has changed. We're not really going to do that with UCAR. It's going to be semi- autonomous, using a decision-aided tech nology that we developed for RPA [rotor craft pilot's associate] to help it be smart, but we're still going to have people in the loop." DARPA and the army have mapped out a four-phase UCAR demonstration pro gramme spread over eight years. The aim is to finish up with a system mature enough to make the transition to full-scale system development and demonstration (SDD). Phase One started in May with the award of four S3 million contracts to Boeing; Lockheed Martin and partner Bell Helicopter; Northrop Grumman; and Sikorsky teamed with Raytheon. The 12-month effort is focused on architecture development, trade studies, risk reduction and conceptual design and capability definition, and will conclude with the downselect of two contractors to go for ward into Phase 2. "As is typical in many DARPA pro grammes we've not given them a laundry list of requirements. They instead have top- level objectives, wide open trade space and have been told to come back and help us understand what they can offer," says Woodbury. The non-tradable requirements boil down to four stipulations: that a UCAR be capable of global operations; be safe to operate over populated areas; can be com manded and controlled from the air and ground; and use JP8 fuel. A UCAR must operate alongside the Boeing AH-64 Apache and the Comanche, which dictates a verti cal take-off and landing design, although not necessarily a helicopter. Canard rotor 28 22-28 OCTOBER 2002 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL www.flightinternational.com
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