Washington Post. UAVs are cool. I fully expect to see these everywhere quite soon (which strangely coincides with low cost computer power crossing insect level of intelligence). However, as these devices move in the private sector uses (think China) we are likely to see them more effectively used by global guerrillas than the DoD (along with Ultralights). In less than five years, these devices (including high bandwidth wireless streaming video, GPS navigation, and moderate payload capability) will be available for the low hundreds of dollars to anyone in the world. Expect to see them everywhere. In our world, what's expensive military grade hardware today is low cost commercial product in few years.
A soldier wary of what's over the next hill can snap together the nose, tail, body and two wings of the Evolution XTS, all six pounds of it, and find out. Just load a hand-held sling shot and let the airplane fly, for 90 minutes if needed. Guide it by computer and watch real-time video stream in.
What kind of radar/IR cross-section do typical UAVs present?
If it's as small as I imagine it is, the really interesting question will be how long it takes for the tactical air-support mission to be handed off from manned aircraft to armed UAVs.
That would put the USAF in an interesting position: which imperative would win out, their longstanding love of any technology that reduces the risk of losing aircrew (standoff weapons, stealth, etc.), or their longstanding aversion to unmanned vehicles?
Posted by: Jason Lefkowitz | October 31, 2005 at 03:04 PM
Small and it could use stealth tech too to reduce it to a bug.
UAVs are a big problem for the USAF. Particularly if the Army build on the platform for self-launched air support.
Posted by: John Robb | October 31, 2005 at 03:27 PM
Ooh, that's an interesting point. UAVs were science fiction when the Key West Agreement was drafted. They might very well be the Army's ticket back into the fixed-wing aviation business.
Not to mention the obvious potential they offer enemies, too. The whole US military establishment has taken total air superiority for granted for decades. The Army's air-defense capability is just sad. If there was an air threat that the USAF couldn't shield them from, they'd have some serious problems to deal with.
Posted by: Jason Lefkowitz | October 31, 2005 at 05:07 PM
Hmm..
The low cost solution..
a GPS/J2ME enabled cell phoenwith a com port..
You would not do an embedded board a that can be tracked mroe easily than a cell phone..ie phone is cloneable..
the UAW platform could be reduced to an RC airplane model..
Damn this freaking scary..
We need to get away from depending upon beltway bandits..
Posted by: Fred Grott | November 02, 2005 at 05:25 AM
Fred, cool insight. A cell phone with a comport would allow long range communication (particularly if it is 3G. LOL.
John
Posted by: John Robb | November 02, 2005 at 02:52 PM
...although I should warn you that UMTS FDD coverage is distinctly limited even in developed and early-adopting markets like the UK. 3 (Hutchison) launched as far back as '99 and their network still sucks anywhere outside London.
Still, you'd be surprised what will fit over 56Kbps GPRS. Certainly a little video feed (I've seen this done with traffic monitoring camera feeds) in the downlink and short control codes in the uplink. Also, with the EDGE upgrades the 2G nets will be doing 200Kbps d/l, and this is coming out quickly in surprising places like Bangladesh. 200Kbps should do it well.
The only objection to control-over-cellular data I would raise is that it's not the bandwidth, it's the latency. If you see on the video link that the bird is heading for the power lines, you don't want to be "Connecting to 234.456.789.001..." for very long, and cellular datanets currently fall down on that.
Posted by: Alex | November 07, 2005 at 06:11 AM