Drones are becoming more and more a part of the way America does business – they have been used in modern day warfare to target those believed to be dangerous or a threat to the security of the United States, but very soon they will be a permanent fixture on America’s landscape. The FAA has been adopting new rules to expand the use of small drones domestically, and by 2013 UAVs are expected to dominate the country’s airspace. Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation brings his take on whether Americans should worry about what law enforcement is doing.
A polarizing debate is emerging over whether the unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as “drones,” should be allowed into U.S. airspace for use by local law enforcement and private businesses.
“No longer a tool used strictly by the military to take out terrorists overseas, drones of all shapes and sizes will soon be in our skies here at home for surveillance missions by local police departments, energy companies looking to build pipelines and farmers looking to feed thirsty crops,” CNET’s Jeff Glor reported Wednesday.
Drone technology may already be a billion-dollar industry, but as Ryan Gallagher blogged Tuesday for Slate, “One of the most significant barriers the industry faces is undoubtedly public opposition. There are critics on all sides of the political spectrum. In the United States, that includes not only campaign groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU, but also libertarian Fox News firebrands.”
An industry trade group aimed to preempt the growing controversy by releasing the first-ever code of conduct for the operation of drone aircraft earlier this week. “The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International said Monday that the recommendations for ‘safe, non-intrusive operation’ are meant to guide operators and reassure a public leery of the possibility of spy drones flying undetected over their homes,” Kevin Begos wrote for the Associated Press.
But as CBS News reported, the dialogue about domestic drone usage took an unexpected turn when news broke that a University of Texas professor and his students “were able to hack into (a civilian) drone’s GPS signals (and) later, in an exercise done in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security at White Sands, N.M., they were even able to make the drone land.”
ABC News columnist Lee Dye responded to the recent development and the security issues it inevitably raises by noting how soon drones are slated to dot American airspace: “There isn’t a lot of time to fix this problem. Congress has mandated that the Federal Aviation Administration come up with the rules to allow civilian drones in U.S. airspace by 2015. And after that, they could be everywhere.”
Wired’s Danger Room national security blog reported that the U.S. military is already operating 64 drone bases in America, with another 22 in the planning stages. (This map shows the Army is already operating drones out of Dugway, Utah, with plans in place for Special Operations Command to begin launching drones from Camp Williams at some future date.)
The use of drones might be raising questions within the United States, but overseas the demand is mounting. The US Defense Departments says they are preparing to make unmanned aerial vehicles commercially available to 66 outside nations.
If approved by Congress and the US State Department, the Pentagon could soon be peddling the remote-controlled war machines that have become a hallmark of America’s overseas wars to dozens of its allies. It’s a not deal that’s likely to be cut without a sound, however, as the use of UAVs has become one of the most debated issues regarding the US military at home.
Last year, however, the DoD put together a list of 66 countries they hope they will be cleared to sell drones too, and today the Defense Department says they are just as eager as ever to get the ball rolling.
Countless watchdog groups have condemned the use of drones, calling the aircraft responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians. As recently as this past weekend, a US-led drone strike in Yemen was reported to cause fatalities for no fewer than 13 civilians. Even so, adding UAVs to the wish-lists of other countries could be a consideration favored by much of Washington, especially those who have feared than planned budget cuts will nix billions from the Pentagon’s budget over the next decade.
Last year, US weapons exports amounted $66.3 billion worth of deals thanks to sales to the States’ allies, the largest figure ever to come through arms sales. Just last month, a Congressional Research Service report claimed that 2011 was “the highest single year agreements total in the history of the US arms export program,” and that trend could very well carry over, especially if UAVs are added to the list of inventory available to the allies.
To Reuters on Wednesday, Northrop Grumman Corp CEO Wes Bush says that the Obama White House is working to make it easier for his company and others to deal drones as part of their international arms exchange, but roadblocks remain in place, regardless.
“I wish we were further along in getting that done. It’s slow, it’s painful, but we’re doing the right things to move in that direction,” Bush tells Reuters.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency deputy director, Richard Genaille, told attendees at the ComDef 2012 conference, ”We don’t really have a comprehensive U.S. government policy” on drone exports, but one was indeed in the works.
“It hasn’t moved quite as fast as we would like, but we’re not giving up,” Genaille said.
In May, Turkish President Abdullah Gul told the state-run Anadolu Agency that the White House has expressed a “positive stance” over the sale of UAVs, and “They are trying to convince the Congress” before an agreement is made.
Last month, the US-based marketing firm Teal Group estimated that “UAV spending will almost double over the next decade from current worldwide UAV expenditures of $6.6 billion annually to $11.4 billion, totaling just over $89 billion in the next ten years.”
Today’s unmanned robotic planes only seemadvanced. A decade after the CIA and the Air Force tucked a Hellfire missile under the wing of aPredator drone, much hasn’t actually changed: pilots in air-conditioned boxes remotely control much of the armed drone fleet; the robo-planes are easy for an enemy to spot; the weapons they fire weigh about the same; as much as they love the skies, they take refuge on dry land; and they’re built around traditional airframes like planes and helicopters. Yawn.
All this is starting to change. Drones are moving out to sea — above it and below it. They’re growing increasingly autonomous, no longer reliant on a pilot with a joystick staring at video feeds from theircameras. They’re getting stealthier; the payloads they carry are changing; and they’re going global. They’re pushing humans out of the gondolas of blimps. And the laboratories of the drones of the future aren’t only owned by American defense contractors, they’re in Israel and China and elsewhere, too.
Of course, there are other advancements as well: new model drones fly longer and wield better cameras. But those are routine improvements, like your smartphone rolling out upgrades to its operating system. Here’s a look at the more ambitious ways drones are getting re-imagined.
The U.S. Navy is at the forefront of drone development. Its most ambitious project is to land a robotic plane on an aircraft carrier with minimal human involvement. It’s among aviation’s hardest maneuvers, one that no current drone on Planet Earth can execute. Next year, the Navy will program its X-47B — a batwing-shaped robot — to land on the deck of the U.S.S. George Washington off the coast of Maryland to see if it can be done. All with a click of a mouse.
If the X-47B can pull this off, it’ll be a sea change (pardon the pun). The X-47B is a demonstration model, not the Navy’s carrier-based drone of the future. By 2018, the Navy hopes, a successful X-47B will yield to the UCLASS program, for Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System. The name is actually pretty descriptive: If it works as planned — again, a big if — the Navy will have robotic eyes in the sky way out into blue waters, capable of spying on suspicious maritime behavior and attacking targets they spot. The effort ranks as one of the most significant in the history of drones.
For all the upgrades drones are set to receive, U.S. military officials swear there’s one unyielding constant: A human being, inside a chain of command, will always make the decision to use a drone’s lethal force. The Switchblade doesn’t exactly violate that rule. But it pushes drone warfare closer to the boundary.
Already heading to Afghanistan for commando usage, the tiny Switchblade folds up into a backpack; gets fired through a tube; and a soldier using a laptop sends it on a one-way mission onto a target. Count the innovations there: Most tiny drones are spies instead of killers; and the Switchblade doesn’t fire a missile, itis the missile. But there’s a third, and more profound, change. The drone can be pre-programmed to hit a set of coordinates, making it an “autonomous platform” that manufacturer AeroVironment likes to boast about. True, a human being still sets those coordinates. But the small Switchblade moves drone warfare a step closer to an era when the robots decide who lives and who dies.
Photo: AeroVironment
Long-Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle
Another example of how the drones of the future won’t necessarily be airplanes or helicopters. The U.S. Army is working on a spy blimp the size of a football field. Pilot not necessarily included.
Much of the hype around Northrop Grumman’s Long-Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, or LEMV, concerns the novelty of a giant blimp capable of hauling a heretofore unimaginable bank of cameras in its gondola. Less attention has gone to the mega-blimp’s intended ability to flip into autonomous mode. Which makes sense, when considering the airship’s other capabilities: If it works correctly, it should be able to stay aloft for weeks at a time. Does it really make sense to keep a human being in the lighter-than-air ship, complete with all the physiological frailties that would necessitate dropping the blimp down onto the ground? The Army is starting to consider those questions: Earlier this month, it brought the blimp over New Jersey for its first test flight; and next year it’s supposed to deploy to Afghanistan.
Image: Northrop Grumman
Raytheon’s Small Tactical Munition
Yes, it’s true: The Small Tactical Munition is not a drone. But it still has important implications for drone warfare.
The weapon of choice for the U.S. drone arsenal is the Hellfire missile. The Hellfires, unleashed on countless terrorism suspects over the last decade, weigh about 100 pounds. That’s a problem: It cuts against the trend of miniaturization that is all the rage in drone circles. Enter the Small Tactical Munition: a bomb weighing just 13 pounds designed to turn the Army’s 12-pound Shadow spy drone into a killer. Raytheon has been developing the Small Tactical Munition for years, but now thinks the bomb could beready to field within months. Not much good for a drone that’s supposed to, say, look like a hummingbird. But it’s probably just the first in mini-weapons for drones.
Photo: Raytheon
Israel Aerospace Industries’ Robo-Butterfly
It makes sense that Israel would be on the bleeding edge of drone technology. Not only are its spy apparatus and tech sectors among the world’s elite, Israel has a long, long history with unmanned aircraft. The Israel Defense Forces’ first drone unit formed in 1971, to aid with reconnaissance. Now it’s joining theU.S. military in developing tiny, tiny drones that look like bugs — with one huge difference.
In May, Israel Hayom reported on the Butterfly, a robot weighing a mere 20 grams and designed to look like the eponymous insect, except packed with listening devices and tiny video cameras. Not altogether dissimilar from the U.S. Air Force‘s “micro-aviary” of insect- and bird-like unmanned aircraft. But Israel Aerospace Industries’ mini-drone adds something unexpected: a helmet that gives an operator Butterfly vision. “When you put this on you are actually inside the butterfly’s cockpit,” enthused the company’s mini-robotics chief Dubi Binyamini. “You see what the butterfly sees. You can fly at any altitude and distance and see everything in real time.” In the States, drone operators merely watch their robotic aircraft’s video feed, with no attempt at anything approaching a sensory meld.
Photo: Israelhayom.co.il
Dark Sword
If you had to guess what this Chinese drone’s specialty is — and you do, because China’s government has cloaked it in secrecy — it’s probably stealth. The elongated, sharp angles of the Dark Sword are reminiscent of a stretched-out mashup of a Stealth Bomber and a Joint Strike Fighter. Designs for Dark Sword have been floating around for years, and Flight International has dubbed it an “amalgam of concepts” — to include, potentially, being a rare unmanned dogfighter.
China isn’t new to drones. It’s got the the Soaring Dragon, a surveillance drone that looks eerily reminiscent of a U.S. Air Force Global Hawk. But a stealthy drone is a next step up for China’s unmanned capabilities. The Dark Sword may not be the only Chinese stealth drone, either. Late in 2011, pictures of the so-called Wind Blade — a stealthy, blended-wing design drone — started surfacing on the internet.
Photo: Pakistan Defence Forum
Boeing’s Phantom Ray
This Boeing stealth drone has survived a near-death experience. Like its rival the X-47B, it’s a demonstrator craft; and like the X-47B, its batwing shape indicates that it’s designed to evade radar. Unlike the X-47B, however, the U.S. military got cold feet: In 2006, it told Boeing that it wasn’t interested in paying for the project anymore. Rather than junk Phantom Ray, Boeing opted to fund the project itself, and last April, the Phantom Ray took off on its maiden flight in St. Louis. And since the Navy hasn’t picked a design for the UCLASS project that comes after the X-47B, it’s possible that the Phantom Ray will eventually overtake its robotic adversary.
Photo: Boeing
General Atomics’ Sea Avenger
Take one part Predator and one part UCLASS and you’ve got the Sea Avenger. In short, the project is a next-gen Predator that can land on an aircraft carrier. Or so manufacturer General Atomics desires.
The Avenger is the third phase of the iconic armed Predator drone, following the Reaper. In 2010, the Air Force had reached the end of its intended purchases of Preds and moved toward buying Avengers. And for good reason: Avengers are way, way faster, capable of going beyond 400 knots, making it three times as fast as a Pred and 50 percent faster than a Reaper. The sleeker design also turns the drone stealthy.
Stealth drones aren’t only for the Americans and the Chinese. BAE Systems is working on Europe’s first stealth robo-killer, the Taranis. Only the drone hasn’t had a smooth upward ascent.
Named for the Celtic thunder god, BAE first rolled out the Taranis in 2010, complete with a Hollywood-style presentation. Yet trial flights, originally scheduled for last year, have been pushed back repeatedly, and now the hope is to get the Taranis aloft in 2013. There isn’t yet much to show for the £143 million — around $220 million — spent developing the prototype, aside from the occasional mistaken UFO sighting. But if European budgetary austerity doesn’t ground the Taranis before it leaves the tarmac, the Taranis’ ability to evade radar could help wean allied militaries off their dependency on American airpower.
Translating to “Manta Ray,” the Skat is a stealthy drone that can carry up to two tons of weapons in its bays, and fly at nearly 500 miles per hour at a low altitude. Mockups and displays of the Skat have been on display for at least five years, but the drone remains in development. It might not take 20 years to field, but it highlights how far the once-mighty Russians have to go to capitalize on the drone revolution.
Photo: Wikimedia
DRDO Rustom 1
Rising global power India doesn’t intend to get left out of the drone revolution. After buying Israeli models for years, its Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) is starting to homebrew its own. Three different models of killer flying ‘bots are in the works: the Rustom 1, the Rustom H and the Rustom 2. (The Rustom 1 had its maiden flight in 2009; the other two are still being developed.) These drones clearly don’t have the capabilities of the American next-gens — they’re slower, not autonomous, and won’t be stealthy. And they wear their influences on their sleeves: The most ambitious model, the Rustom H, seems like a knock-off of the iconic Predator. Still, the arrival of India’s drone sector helps underscore how drone tech has cemented itself as a status symbol for rising powers.
Israel’s Elbit Systems has soared into the international market with a new agreement with Boeing to market the company’s Hermes UAVs, American military and defense media reported Monday.
The agreement gives Elbit a long-desired stronger foothold in the U.S. market.
Its Hermes 450 UAV are exported to several countries, including Britain, Singapore, Georgia and Brazil. It also is a principle part of the IDF’s counterterrorist operations.
The larger Hermes 900 can carry larger payloads for extended missions and is often used for ground support and maritime patrol missions. “This partnership further expands and enhances Boeing’s longstanding relationship with Elbit Systems to include unmanned products,” said Debbie Rub, Boeing Missiles and Unmanned Airborne Systems vice president and general manager.
She said the Hermes UAVs will help Boeing supply needs by the United States and its allies.
Boeing and Elbit recently announced other strategic agreements relating to advanced fighter avionics and long-term cooperation providing helmet-mounted display sights for all Boeing’s fighter planes.
Boeing earlier this year chose Elbit’s Brazilian subsidiary to provide large cockpit displays for the F-15 and the F-18 fighters.
A massive experimental drone designed by Boeing Co. engineers to fly for up to four days at a time completed its first test flight above the Mojave Desert at Edwards Air Force Base.
The drone, called Phantom Eye, and its hydrogen-fueled propulsion system have the potential to vastly expand the reach of military spy craft. The longest that reconnaissance planes can stay in the air now is about 30 hours.
In the test flight, which took place Friday, the Phantom Eye circled above Edwards at about 4,080 feet above Edwards for 28 minutes. After touching down, the vehicle had problems when the landing gear dug into the lake bed and broke.
The Chicago-based company said engineers are assessing the damage but added that they plan on putting the Phantom Eye through more demanding test flights in the future.
With a 150-foot wingspan and an egg-shaped fuselage, the drone was built at Boeing’s Phantom Works complex in St. Louis with engineering support from its facilities in Huntington Beach. The drone is designed to spy over vast areas at an altitude of up to 65,000 feet.
“This day ushers in a new era of persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance where an unmanned aircraft will remain on station for days at a time providing critical information and services,” said Phantom Works President Darryl Davis in a statement. “This flight puts Boeing on a path to accomplish another aerospace first — the capability of four days of un-refueled, autonomous flight.”
Unlike existing combat drones that are controlled remotely by a human pilot, the Phantom Eye could carry out a mission controlled almost entirely by a computer. A human pilot sitting miles away can design a flight path and sends it on its way, and a computer program guides it to the target and back.
The flight was powered by liquid hydrogen. Boeing says the fuel is a powerful alternative for vehicles that require endurance, and the combustion leaves only water in the atmosphere.
It took Boeing about four years to get the Phantom Eye to the runway, without the promise of a payout. Boeing does not have a contract on the drone; it is developing the craft at its own expense.
Drones are becoming more and more a part of the way America does business – they have been used in modern day warfare to target those believed to be dangerous or a threat to the security of the United States, but very soon they will be a permanent fixture on America’s landscape. The FAA has been adopting new rules to expand the use of small drones domestically, and by 2013 UAVs are expected to dominate the country’s airspace. Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation brings his take on whether Americans should worry about what law enforcement is doing.
