How UAV's will Change Aviation

Are airplane pilots destined for the same fate as flight navigators and engineers? Will they be replaced by lines of code, electrons and data-linked commands from faceless controllers beyond the horizon?

However unlikely that scenario, the trend is worth noting. As is being demonstrated daily in thousands of operations around the world, the black boxes on a growing number of aircraft are so "smart," they obviate the need to have a human operator on board to complete a given mission.

Pointing to the hundreds of automated takeoffs and landings performed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) every day, David Vos, senior director, unmanned aerial systems at Rockwell Collins, declared, "It doesn't matter whether a pilot is on board. Think about that. What does it enable?"

What does it "enable" to have human ability, judgment and experience on board the aircraft anyway? In the age when experience — "best practices," if you will — can be distilled into software and sensor accuracy can exceed human situational awareness, what need, then, is there for the steady human hand at the helm? When the effect of the experienced hand can be duplicated and the database of experience constantly (and wirelessly) added to?

You see where this is leading, right? Because before we yield the cockpit to software and circuitry, we have to yield airspace to the unmanned and autonomously piloted vehicle. This is coming sooner than we want to accept — UAVs operating routinely in civil airspace, at our flight level, and on computer-generated NextGen 4-D ballistic flight plans. And in large numbers.

The U.S. military alone operates thousands of them — and the militaries from France, Israel, England, Russia and elsewhere are also operating UAVs in ever-growing numbers. From the individual 10-person squad up through theater level, every command seems to be cultivating its own UAV for the invaluable "look over the hill" (or hemisphere) it provides.

These unmanned aerial systems (UAS, a more inclusive nomenclature) embrace a mind-boggling diversity of vehicle types and a size spectrum ranging from insect (micro) dimension to something with far more gravitas — indeed, the RQ-4B Global Hawk, Northrop Grumman's long-range reconnaissance platform, has a span of 130 feet, or about the same as that of a Boeing 757.

Both the U.S. Air Force and Navy now operate intercontinental variants of the Global Hawk that has flown unrefueled from the U.S. West Coast to Australia. And both services are pursuing visions of very-high-performance, unmanned combat aircraft (UCAV), Boeing's Phantom Ray for the Air Force and the X-47B offered to the Navy by Northrop Grumman (and in preparation for carrier trials in 2011) that are formidable in their lethality and potential.

Since systems to support a human operator — pressurization, environmental, cockpit instrumentation, ejection seat, windows, armor, etc. — are unnecessary in an unmanned aircraft, the vehicle's overall size and weight can be reduced by a third below those of comparable world-class piloted fighters. Other yields would include commensurate reductions in overall systems complexity, manufacturing difficulty, maintenance and operating costs. And, of course, the benefit to ground-based operators of these remotely piloted weapons performing dangerous missions deep in harm's way without endangering their own lives, is incalculable.

Hardly a week goes by.....   READ MORE: AviationWeek