The age of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has arrived, a top Pentagon admiral announced in Paris as he revealed details of its key role in recent allied air strikes against Serb forces.
Speaking at the annual Shephard Press UAV Conference immediately before the air show, Rear Admiral Robert Nutwell declared that "NATO's Operation Allied Force in Yugoslavia demonstrated that a new age in reconnaissance is in fact dawning".
At the same event, top American market analyst Katrina Herrick of consultants Frost & Sullivan predicted a global market for UAVs worth more than $22 billion up to 2005.
Rear Admiral Nutwell, who is deputy secretary of defense for command, control communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, told the conference that "for the first time in warfare, commanders at all levels have had nearly continuous, real-time visibility of at least portions of the battlefield through optical and video sensors carried on the US Predator and Hunter UAVs."
Theatre
"The video from these UAVs is distributed throughout the theatre in near real-time via satellite communications," Nutwell says. "UAVs from allied nations have also contributed to battlespace awareness in Kosovo.
"In short, UAVs no longer provide niche capability. They have made themselves indispensable to commanders in this operation and we cannot contemplate future combat or other military operations without them."
It emerged at the conference that some 20 allied UAVs have been lost in the conflict, through a mixture of enemy action and technical problems. The USAF's General Atomics RQ-1A Predators flew more than 2,000h in the current operation, says Nutwell. One was lost.
Herbert Traut, of DaimlerChrysler, told the conference that German Army Dornier CL 289 Drones have flown some 400 sorties since they were deployed to Macedonia in December last year, with four being lost.
US Army Colonel Michael Howell said that 12 TRW/IAI RQ-5A Hunters were deployed to Macedonia on 29 March and flew the first of 1,300 missions on 3 April. He reported that four were lost to Serb ground-based air defences, predominantely shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles.
Every flight by the US Army UAVs was engaged by Serb anti-aircraft gunners. The video imagery from the Hunter was distributed around the world by satellites, with NATO's supreme commander, General Wes Clark, being able to watch it in his office in Belgium, says Howell.
The Hunter was used to identify targets for a wide range of allied aircraft, including F-16s and A-10s. Howell says the allied UAVs were able to go down low to find targets to avoid endangering NATO pilots.
"The Serbs tried to exploit the fact that they shot down our UAVs for propaganda but it didn't work. They did not get press coverage from walking down the street with our computer chips, rather than the body of a pilot."
Major Grant Holden of the British Royal Artillery told the conference that the Marconi Phoenix UAV made a number of successful operational flights over Kosovo and none was lost. This was the operational debut of the much-troubled and delayed system.
French forces also used CL-289 UAVs along with SAGEM Crecerelle UAVs during the Kosovo war, while the Italian Army used its Meteor CAE Mirach 26 system.
Source: Flight Daily News
