The US Navy is developing its own unmanned systems roadmap aimed at achieving significantly higher levels of integration between unmanned land, sea and air vehicles to be fielded over the next two decades. The plan will give priority to developing common communication and command and control systems for unmanned systems.
Helmut Portmann, head of the USN-led Joint Unmanned Systems Common Control Advanced Technology Demonstration project, says a standardised UAV communications system is proposed to be developed and rolled out between mid-2005 and mid-2009. Development of a common UAV command and control environment will occur between mid-2005 and early 2008.
Similar timeframes are envisaged for application to unmanned land and sea vehicles, with the architectures to move into a single integrated system by 2012, says Portmann. Further evolution to allow the deployment of integrated autonomous swarms of unmanned land, sea and air vehicles is planned to be achieved after 2015.
Source: Flight International
