The civilian market could revolutionise the UAV industry
Peter La Franchi/CANBERRA
If market surveys are to be believed, the global unmanned air vehicle industry may find itself pursuing a new focus over the next three to five years of developing commercial markets. While still in its infancy, the civil sector looms in ways which could revolutionise the UAV industry, and this includes long-term potential for the present dominance of military programmes to cede to commercial developers.
Market assessments to date largely concentrate on alternative means of fulfilling a range of existing commercial aviation services, particularly in specialist sectors such as agriculture, civilian policing, scientific services, mapping and remote sensing.
But new markets are also seen as viable, particularly in the telecommunications services segment where endurance platforms have become a major rallying point for commercial UAV concepts, particularly among US-based developers such as Northrop Grumman and AeroVironment.
Yet despite the expressed optimism, the future of commercial UAV applications remains elusive. Hurdles include the cost of system development, as compared to the purchase of existing manned aerospace services, and major regulatory barriers are still to be overcome. The sector also awaits acceptance from potential users who want evidence that taking the pilot out of an air vehicle in favour of ground-based command and control offers a meaningful revolution in business terms. Nor does the sector yet support any clear economic benchmark data that shows an unequivocal way forward.
In the eyes of a number of analysts, the civilian market opportunity in the medium term may, in fact, be over-rated. Others remain optimistic but concede the obvious. According to Dr K C Wong, head of UAV development at the University of Sydney, the "often promised widespread use of UAVs in the global civilian market has generally not yet been realised, although most UAV market surveys have indicated a significant upward trend in the civilian market share happening right about now. There are, indeed, several examples of successes in specific niche market sectors, but in general the civilian UAV market share remains elusive."
But as Wong also points out, a quietly developing commercial market is emerging through a broad array of programmes in a number of nations and through testing of various business strategies and opportunities. He notes that one of the world's most successful UAVs, in production terms, is the Yamaha R-50/RMAX rotary wing agricultural aircraft. At least 1,200 have gone to Japanese farmers since the early 1990s and others have been sold internationally for use by scientific research agencies.
The main barrier to civil UAV use, Wong says, is "the risk of financial investment in as yet unproven systems. In contrast to military applications, for which system developments are typically government funded, civilian operators must provide their own outlay in UAVs.
"There is then a tendency to buy off-the-shelf as this gives the perception of a proven product. Potential civil operators are often hesitant to invest in developmental projects where the level of investment required to realise an operational system is uncertain and success may not be guaranteed. Unfortunately, the capital cost of off-the-shelf systems is typically still high on a per unit basis."
One way forward, Wong suggests, is for UAV manufacturers to reassess at least part of their current emphasis on military programmes in favour of lower cost systems specifically developed for commercial needs.
Commercial Hawks?
As with the commercial helicopter industry, however, the focus on military UAV requirements may also provide the offsets necessary to achieve commercially acceptable standards of performance and reliability. For example, last September Northrop Grumman set up a specialist "unmanned strategy and capture team" to explore future options for the company's RQ-4 Global Hawk endurance system, which is in advanced development for the US Air Force.
Part of the motivation for creating the team, says Bob Mitchell, vice president Northrop Ryan, was that commercial sector interest in Global Hawk "is a subject that has come up many times. We have actually spent quite a lot of time talking to various commercial ventures in the US who have interest in providing communications capability. We have also worked with DARPA and the USAF on this new concept. Known as the airborne communications node, it is not at a far enough advanced stage yet . But I believe that in the long run Global Hawk is going to provide a broadband communications battlefield or commercial capability."
Global Hawk commercialisation, Mitchell says, has the potential to develop into "a tremendous growth market. We are not just talking communications here." The capture team, he says, is assessing both civil and military options, "looking at all alternative market areas for which ones may offer the greatest gain. We have also had third party studies undertaken to look at what market expansion capabilities are in certain areas. My team started last September and one area that we are looking at is commercialisation."
Mitchell acknowledges that the studies remain at an early stage because of the priority being given to finalising Global Hawk development for the USAF, but he says the initial findings suggest "there is plenty of precedent. If you look at satellite communications, they began as military ventures and became commercialised very quickly. In fact they are now a commodity, if you like. We don't want to be a commodity but to be the platform furnisher. So if we were to do anything in that area, we would probably follow some commercial model."
The primary obstacles to commercial UAV services across the board, Mitchell says, are the treatment of unmanned aircraft by air traffic control regulators and system reliability. Endurance platforms, in particular, will require "world wide traffic operations integration. Both us and the [US] Government are investing in that. We think we have a real leadership position because we fly routinely in the airspace.
"But in order to fly in the airspace, you also need to think about certifying your platforms to similar standards to that of military and civilian aircraft. That means [while] we have a dual redundant system architecture on Global Hawk now, in the long term we might have a quadruple or triple redundant architecture to increase redundancy and, therefore, reliability. Then there is the whole question of maintaining communications. You cannot ever afford to lose communications. But UAVs also need to be equipped with things like weather radar and collision avoidance. Those are the critical issues so that we can routinely operate in airspace and be reliable."
But even Global Hawk, Mitchell concedes, may not be able to provide all the capabilities that a commercial operator might seek from an endurance platform. Nor is it the case, he points out, that the civil applications being proposed actually require an unmanned platform. "You have to consider that you don't necessarily have to be unmanned to do some of these missions. Ability to stay on station for 24-36 hours really drives you to being un-piloted or whatever.
"Sometimes people think there has got to be a great market when you could do that probably just as effectively with an existing off-the-shelf aircraft. That is a consideration. But I do believe that if we had absolutely reliable, totally 100% dependable architecture, if it went up there and stayed aloft for three days in a row, then that would be a capability. Right now 36-40 hours is a long time but it may not be enough for some applications. Having said that, I don't want to give people the impression that we are not reliable. [Global Hawk is] a highly reliable system, even as we stand."
Atmospheric satellites
The predominance of telecommunications services in forecasting commercial UAV applications growth is directly based on the boom that the sector is enjoying - thanks to the exponential uptake in multimedia information technology worldwide. The concept of service is equally straightforward: position an endurance platform equipped with broadband transponders at high altitude above a geographic area with either limited existing telecommunications services or where the terrestrial or satellite infrastructure is inadequate to meet demand.
The concept is also far closer to becoming a reality than a range of other endurance UAV-based commercial applications. But manned platforms lead the development effort in the USA because of the absence of an appropriate air traffic management regime. St Louis-based Angel Technologies, for example, has already demonstrated the basic ability to provide services in a two-week flight trial carried out over Los Angeles last August. That trial used a combination of a Raytheon-developed broadband transponder payload and the Proteus optionally-manned aircraft developed for Angel by Scaled Composites.
According to Marc Arnold, chief executive officer of Angel Technologies, the economics of endurance platform based telecommunications "are stunningly attractive". Extensive modelling, he says, suggests that "attractive economic returns are available by serving the top 200 cities worldwide with a fleet of less than 600 planes. These markets comprise less than 1% of the Earth's landmass, 15% of the world's population and 35% of the world's GDP."
Angel Technologies will be in a position to begin limited commercial services using the Proteus platform, Arnold says, from 2003. A basic round-the-clock service, he says, still requires three aircraft to be constructed and "significant reliability engineering" to be carried out to improve the current prototype system design.
Endurance UAVs, Arnold says, have been assessed by his firm "in some detail". He says the conclusions are that "technical and regulatory risks more than outweighed the marginal - theoretical - benefits for commercial applications. Removing pilots requires a staff of people on the ground to monitor the flight in real time. There are no regulations governing commercial UAV operations over cities and we would lose the ability to divert to any of the more than 3,500 airports in the USA, for example to avoid poor weather.
"We believe our approach is the most business-like and entails more manageable risks. Minimal economic benefits and significant technical and regulatory risks preclude the economic use of large UAV platforms for commercial telecom applications over cities for the foreseeable future."
Angel's main rival in developing the market is solar-powered aircraft developer AeroVironment with its Skytower concept, based on the Helios "eternal endurance" UAV. According to AeroVironment officials, a commercial service involving a single aircraft remaining on station above a major city for six months at a time will be viable from 2004.
The company has also been engaged in talks with a variety of potential backers in the USA and Japan since February this year. If funding is secured, a telecommunications demonstration could be staged later this year using the existing Helios prototype aircraft.
Newer niches
Not all commercial endurance UAV applications, however, are predicated on the use of air vehicles in the Global Hawk and Helios class. One of the most innovative concepts to emerge in recent years is the Aerosonde Robotic Aircraft company's "global reconnaissance" programme, which is based on a constellation of 250-300 endurance UAVs orbiting the planet mid-atmosphere and monitoring of world's weather patterns, replacing current methods that use weather balloons. The data gathered would be sold to national and private sector meteorological agencies, as well as scientific research bodies.
The Aerosonde Mk 1 air vehicle, with a wingspan of just 3m (10ft) and jointly developed with the US Insitu Group, holds the distinction of, in 1998, having been the first UAV to cross the Atlantic Ocean. In situ involvement in the programme ended two years ago, and the latest Mk 111 vehicle, which commenced flying trials earlier this year, has a range in excess of 4,000km (2,160nm) and an endurance target of above 40h.
Aerosonde is planning to have global reconnaissance capability commercially operational by 2005-2006. To fund the programme, the company will commence trade on the Australian stock market (ASX) within a month via a friendly take-over by Australian Platinum, already listed on the ASX, with the support of SAAB Systems and Australian investment company Tomorrow.
The ASX listing comes after nearly two years of seeking underwriter support for floats in Aerosonde's home market, as well as in the USA. Because of the single product focus of the company and an expected SAAB equity of some 20%, the Australian listing is seen by local aerospace and finance analysts as an important test of investor attitudes towards commercial UAV concepts as a whole, with ramifications reaching well beyond domestic market sentiment.
Aerosonde CEO Dr Greg Holland acknowledges the wider significance. The civil UAV marketplace, he argues, suffers from a lack of detailed market forecasting based on actual requirements rather than speculation. But he adds, "it is almost impossible to really tell what the [civil UAV] market is [as a whole]. If, in 1947, I had asked what would be the market for laptop computers, what would you have said? The answer is that you wouldn't have known. The reason is that to some extent it is an iterative thing; it is an educative thing. There are plenty of aircraft around that can actually start doing things, he says.
"People start waking up and saying 'we can do that with this' and I am certain that there are a whole lot of really interesting programmes out there and applications we haven't even dreamed of yet. So it is hard to nail it down-but from my perspective it is a very big market and, if I can even get us to have even a small component of it, I am going to be a happy person."
Source: Flight International
