ARMY AL&T
Defining Army UAS Integration
The role of UAS in today’s operations is significant. “The introduction of UAS has had significant implication on how wars are fought today and how they will be fought in the future,” said COL Christopher B. Carlile, Director, Army UAS Center of Excellence (COE), Fort Rucker, AL. According to Carlile, more than 325 Army UAS are deployed today, and they have flown nearly 900,000 hours in support of combat operations. In 2009, the Army Aviation Center’s UAS Training Battalion, Fort Huachuca, AZ, trained more than 2,100 UAS operators and maintainers (including those in the U.S. Marines Corps (USMC) and U.S. Navy)—an 800-percent increase since 2003. “We’ve learned that UAS are continuing to prove themselves in key operational roles for the Army—and for the other services— on a daily basis. We employ them and we rely on them to save Soldiers’ lives on the ground,” said Carlile.
UAS integration involves complex capable manned and unmanned systems that are operated by trained UAS and sensor operators and inte- grated across the Army and joint
community. Integrating unmanned aircraft and ground systems to work together requires common control and architecture. Factors contributing to UAS integration include unmanned aircraft, mission packages, the human element, the control element, display, communication architecture, and life- cycle logistics. All these are centered around the Soldier and doctrine, orga- nization, training, materiel, and leader development, personnel and facility (DOTML-PF).
System-of-Systems (SoS) Army UAS function as an integrated system incorporating manned and unmanned assets. The Army UAS con- cept is an SoS driven by DOTML-PF, and UAS integration doctrine needs to be developed through the accompany- ing tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). While UAS is a system approach, there are mission-specific platforms within UAS functions. These mission- specific platforms are acceptable as long as they work in an SoS environment and are interoperable within the UAS family.
Ellis W. Golson, Director, Capability Development and Integration Direct- orate, U.S. Army Aviation COE
(USAACE), explained the importance of an SoS approach. “To have UAS, you must have the people, the aerial plat- form, the sensor, the network to carry the information, a device that is going to display it to whoever needs it, and the airspace,” he said. “If all those aren’t syn- chronized, it won’t work. We can have the best platform or the best sensors in the world and we can’t do anything with them because we don’t have any way to transmit it or display it.”
Interoperability Profiles Industry partner Lori Eckles, L3 Communications, Vice President Advanced Development Programs, advised that UAS development is accomplished through designation in one of three system categories: legacy, upgraded, and new. The development of an overarching interoperability profile is critical to ensuring the UAS platforms can work together. The pro- file “provides not just interoperability at the communication level, but also end- to-end sensory exploitation system,” said Eckles. The SoS approach gives mission flexibility and common mis- sion applications and allows the aircraft in the sky to disseminate real-time data to multiple users on the ground.
APRIL –JUNE 2010 37
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