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Unmanned Aircraft Will Test Air Traffic Control
coondoggie writes "While the skies aren't exactly buzzing with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) just yet, experts are warning their explosive growth will require military and public officials to address the issue sooner than they might think.
The four chiefs of service aviation and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) branches told the Army Aviation Association of America's unmanned aircraft symposium last week that the military should crystallize combat air control regarding UAVs, while domestic authorities must work out access and use of UAVs in domestic airspace. "I'm surprised we haven't had a collision yet," said Rear Adm. Joseph Aucoin, director of the Navy's aviation plans and requirements branch."
1. For recon work you can pack more sensor equipment in, you can configure the UAV to have extremely long loiter times, some can be made a lot smaller and cheeper than a manned craft.
2. For combat craft the really big selling point is that when your fighter gets shot down you haven't lost several million pounds worth of trained crew in addition to several million pounds of aircraft... unmanned uav's can also pull alot higher G force than a traditional craft (ok the airframe can take it but the crew won't appreciate it).
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Those aircraft are very low weight composite aircraft with very thight energy budgets. Due to the composite parts, they are invisible to primary radar. Due to the energy budget, they cannot install an SSR transponder. In other words, they are completely invisble in case something goes wrong. (in which you cannot trust the transponder anyhow)
What you need in such case is a direct link to air traffic control to tell that your autonomious plane is lost so that they can clear a part of the airspace. Now, since your aircraft is no longer controlled by a "ground pilot", who is going to make the call?
One alternative is to let the ground station relay the aircraft position to ATC centers (air traffic control centers). However, current ATC systems are not built to accept this information, especially not when the number of users of UAVs increases.
Why not just stick radar on them? Or beam them radar images?
Problem solved. No stupidly advanced image recognition system needed.
Until a couple of years ago my dad flew tugs for a glider club here in Australia. Like me, he is an old hacker and spent some time working on a TCAS like system for the gliders. Its pretty much what you described. A COTS GPS and some simple communication gear.
I was at the club with him one day and helped a pilot change a wheel on a glider. Its a one bolt job. Very simple. The pilot reminded me not to talk about it too much because they have to get a LAME out to do stuff like that. Maybe that profession is the source of come of the conservatism.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Dunno if this video is real, but it sure looks like it is. Near miss between a UAV and an Airbus A300.
IAIFAUE (I Am In Fact A UAV Engineer), and the main way we pitch our products is that they do missions thta are too dull, dirty, dangerous, or expensive for human crews. For examples, flying in a circle for 10 hours watching the same spot waiting for someone to come out (dull) and flying a sampler through a cloud of stuff and determining that it is, in fact, nerve gas (dirty and dangerous).