Defense Technology International - March 2008 - (Page 39)

RAMON LOPEZ CONCEPT IAI/MALAT BUSY AS BEES DAVID ESHEL•TEL AVIV New UAVs operating in civilian airspace have great potential in Israel. Manufacturers insist their drones can perform all sorts of tasks: monitoring ﬂood defenses, using persistent surveillance to hunt criminals, supporting ﬁreﬁghters in large blazes, aiding rescue operations at sea or providing wireless relay networks. Speeders may also find themselves stopped and ticketed by police connected to the unblinking eye of a highway patrol drone. Before any of this can happen, though, there are operational problems that must be worked out. One is a lack of radio frequencies, which hinders the control of UAVs in congested airspace. To coexist safely with civilian air trafﬁc, UAVs have to maintain radio links between operators and air trafﬁc controllers. Standardized collision-avoidance systems must also be approved. To meet these and other needs relating to civil aviation, Israel’s aviation authority formed a committee to test UAVs and their modes of operation. Elbit Systems was the ﬁrst Israeli company to complete the required procedures and receive civil certiﬁcation, in May 2007, for its Hermes 450 UAV. One month later, IAI/Malat’s Heron UAV, a medium-altitude, long-endurance platform, received an unmanned aircraft system permit to conduct non-military missions in Israeli airspace. The Heron can ﬂy with various payloads. IAI/Malat has clearance for ﬂights of its military UAVs in Switzerland, Finland, Belgium and France, and is gaining approval in Australia. Flight permits for testing and demonstration were also granted in Sweden, Canada, the U.K. and Singapore. Aeronautics Defense Systems Ltd. and Israel’s highway police employ the company’s Aerostar UAV in a down-to-earth experiment: detecting and arresting trafﬁc offenders. Police cars have video terminals linked to live feeds from Aerostar. I 39 Proponents say UAVs like Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk could easily navigate civil airspace and land at airports. NASA and the U.S. Forest Service were early proponents of UAV operations in civil airspace, having successfully demonstrated how they can use the platforms to monitor wildﬁres. Last summer, NASA ﬂew its Ikhana UAV for the USFS, a Predator B with advanced imaging and communications equipment, to capture real-time thermal images of wildfires that were passed along to ﬁreﬁghters. Meanwhile, two Northrop Grumman Global Hawk high-altitude long-endurance UAVs were transferred to NASA from the U.S. Air Force last December for research. The Global Hawks were the ﬁrst and sixth aircraft built in the series and were made available to the space agency when USAF had no further need for them. Customs and Border Protection operates the MQ-9 Predator B in Arizona to monitor the Mexican border, and will soon have a second Predator B in North Dakota to watch the Canadian border. The agency is acquiring a small ﬂeet of Predator Bs for overland missions and possibly maritime interdiction. It is also developing a capability in which Predator Bs and support equipment would be loaded onto U.S. Coast Guard C-130 aircraft to handle natural disasters and monitor international sports events. The quick-reaction detail would hold a certiﬁcate of authorization to ﬂy in civil airspace. But sometimes things go wrong, as was the case on Apr. 25, 2006, when a Customs and Border Protection Predator B looking for illegal aliens crashed within 100 yd. of a house in a sparsely populated area near Nogales, Ariz. No one on the ground was injured, but the drone was heavily damaged. A National Transportation Safety AviationWeek.com/dti Board (NTSB) probe determined that the probable cause of the accident was the operator’s failure to use checklist procedures when switching control from a console that had become inoperable. This resulted in the fuel valve inadvertently being shut o and the loss of engine power. “This investigation has raised questions about the di erent standards for manned and unmanned aircraft and the safety implications of this discrepancy,” says NTSB Chairman Mark V. Rosenker. “Why, for example, were numerous unresolved lock-ups of the pilot’s control console even possible when such conditions would never be tolerated in the cockpit of a manned aircraft?” Expressing concerns about how manned and unmanned aircraft will share airspace, Rosenker adds, “The fact that we approved 22 safety recommendations based on our investigation of a single accident is an indication of the scope of the safety issues unmanned aircraft are bringing into the NAS. The pilot is still the pilot, whether he is at a remote console or on the ﬂight deck. We need to make sure that the system by which pilots are trained . . . is rigorous and thorough.” For its part the FAA says that the design of many UAVs makes them di cult to see, and adequate “detect, sense and avoid” technology is years away. Until this and other technologies meet federal requirements, it may be some time before UAVs become an integral part of the National Airspace System, no matter how much potential they o er. I To read one of our many weblog posts on UAVs, go to DTI’s homepage, AviationWeek.com/dti, and click on ‘Extras for this issue’ under ‘DTI Interactive.’ MARCH 2008 DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL http://www.aviationweek.com/dti http://www.aviationweek.com/dti

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Defense Technology International - March 2008 Contents Sweden Cancels SEP; Israel Launches Imaging Satellite; Geotextiles Secure Ammo Dump U.S. Navy Taps Neural Architecture Software to Assure Job Satisfaction Shrapnel-Like Pieces of Reactive Materials Increase Explosive Force of Bombs Technology is Rapidly Closing the Gap Between Sensors and Shooters Italian Army Program Aims to Develop a Fully Networked Land Force Political and Military Uncertainties Plague U.S. Defense Budget Democrats Put Pentagon on Notice Over Spending and Policy at DTAR Conference Russian Combat Vehicle Protects Tank Formations from Anti-Armor Weapons European Battlelabs Use Simulation to Verify Technologies and Stretch Defense Funds Malaysia Accelerates Fleet Modernization to meet Long-Term Goals U.S. Navy Says Composite Raiding Boat May Reduce Injuries From Wave Shocks Seeing Isn’t Believing When it Comes to Deciphering Funds for Secret Projects Advances in Sensors and Propulsion Make Torpedoes Ever More Lethal FAA is in No Rush to Approve Rules that Let UAVs Fly in Civil Airspace USS Truman Carrier Strike Group Patrols a Rough Neighborhood 24/7 U.S. says Sino-Russian Space Disarmament Plan is Riddled with Pitfalls Hyperspeed Projectile; “Sound Cloak” Hides Subs; Improving Nuclear Forensics Dutch Air Commodore Theo ten Haaf Analyzes the Impact of Rotary-Wing Operations One Soldier’s War is a Behind-the-Headlines Look at Russia’s Campaigns in Chechnya Black Budgets are Huge and Growing, and Often Conceal Amazing Failures

Defense Technology International - March 2008

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