Lessons from recent war games are pointing to a possible emerging role for unmanned logistics air vehicles as part of future United Kingdom defence force capabilities, according to a senior Ministry of Defence UAV capability planner.
Wing Commander Andrew Jeffrey, head of UAV operations in the UK Ministry of Defence's directorate of air staff, says the potential role could cover a significant spectrum of UAV classes, ranging from drop-pods carried by tactical systems to dedicated heavy-lift aircraft.
Speaking at the Royal Aeronautical Society's UAV Systems 2006 conference in London 14 November, Jeffrey said war games held in early November had given rise to “a real quick, dirty consideration” of the concept, ranging across all classes of operational deployment.
“One of the lessons that kind of came out on the UAV front was how about unmanned transport aircraft, not necessarily to carry people around but to carry kit around. One of the constraining factors that came out of the war game [was] actually ferrying stuff around the world – rapid global mobility as we call it – actually is very expensive in terms of aircrew, and it is the crews that have the limitations.
“If the numbers of crews were limiting our strategic mobility and to do that fast, then perhaps we should think about taking the crews out of the front, or some of the crews out.”
He said that ULAV systems could open up new flexibility for tactical operations: “Unmanned replenishment of the front line forces is an issue because you haven’t necessarily got to maintain a line of communications. You can hop over it if you like.”
Adoption of large ULAV platforms could potentially support transport of a variety of heavy battlefield systems, including tanks, he suggested. However ULAV’s would also pose a variety of new challenges: “When and how and if we really haven’t dealt with yet.”
Source: FlightGlobal.com
