CIAO DATE: 12/04

UAVs/UCAVs – Missions, Challenges, And Strategic Implications For Small And Medium Powers

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (armed and unarmed) are playing a crucial role in defense transformation by providing the military with a new platform that exploits advances in info-communications technologies, while playing a crucial role in the network-centric warfare concept. This paper studies various air missions (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, Couterair, etc.) to determine whether the UAVs represent a truly disruptive technology. This paper also studies the strategic implications of UAVs for small and medium powers. It concludes that the UAV is not a truly disruptive technology as there will alwyas be missions that will require the manned aircraft. Their software complexity, automation and communications architecture makes them operationally unreliable for many missions and also considerably increases their cost by making them nearly as expensive as their manned counterpart. Advances in air defense systems and manned counterair aircraft considerably limit the utility of the unmanned platform for many air missions. This research concludes that the future is likely to see a mix of manned and unmanned aircraft networked with satellites performing complex air missions. The research also concludes that small and medium powers are likely to find UAVs useful in ISR roles only as the unmanned combat platform is still an unproven technology and is in its developmental stages. However, collaboration, licensed production and joint marketing are areas that will allow small and medium powers (together perhaps with the United States) to come together for a joing effort.

Full text (PDF, 34 pages, 675.9 KB)