Defence and Security head calls for research harmony
Europe's future joint arms procurement agency should urge its member nations to harmonise research and development funding for unmanned air vehicles, and draw up a joint roadmap to steer their requirements and funding, believes one of EADS's senior executives.
Projecting a European market worth around €5 billion ($6 billion) over the next eight years, EADS Defence & Security Systems head Thomas Enders says the continent will provide the world's second largest market for UAVs and unmanned combat air vehicles over the coming decades.
Highlighting his company's burgeoning relationships with UAV builders Israel Aircraft Industries and Northrop Grumman, Enders says their experience will be key in expanding EADS's capabilities in developing high- and medium-altitude long-endurance UAVs. While European industry does not lack the skills required to conduct such work, it has suffered as a result of years of insufficient state funding, placing it behind Israeli and US companies in this sector, he argues.
"We don't have the resources or the time to meet [European] requirements from scratch, so we must co-operate," says Enders.
EADS intends to be at the heart of Europe's UAV industry through initiatives such as its formative EuroHawk joint venture with Northrop Grumman. This appears set to win an order to meet intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements for Germany.
"In the long term, we will see an efficient and thriving European UAV industry," says Enders, drawing parallels with its past development of airliners. "Twenty years ago, Airbus was ridiculed, as it only had two products: the A300 and the A310. But nowadays we are fully competitive, to say the least," he adds. The company's UAV plans mirror a similar "crawl, walk, run" strategy, he says.
Enders says that he also envisages UAVs being used for "dull and dirty" commercial tasks, such as the air movement of freight, within the next 30 years. Military developments and applications will play a "pioneering role" for such an advance, he says.
Newly matured technologies and changed military and public perceptions will make the current spike in UAV interest "more than a straw fire", he believes.
EADS expects the German parliament late this year to approve its collaborative development of the EuroHawk system to replace Germany's current Breguet Atlantic signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft from around 2010. The company expects to prepare a EuroHawk SIGINT demonstrator for flight by 2008, with the development of an image intelligence payload to run in parallel.
Other roles considered for the EuroHawk include maritime surveillance, says EADS. The company has established an integrated team with Northrop Grumman at Friedrichshafen.
Source: Flight International
