AUSTIN, Texas – The Army wants new tactical unmanned aerial vehicles that would eventually replace the drones the service now flies, including the General Atomics Gray Eagle and Shadow aircraft.
Unmanned aerial systems need a greater degree of autonomy and should perform more missions than they currently do, said. Jeffrey Singleton, the service’s director of technology, at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Science and Engineering Technology conference in Austin, Texas.
Swarming drones appears to be the future of unmanned platforms, whether on the ground or in the air. The Army, along with the Navy and Air Force, wants low-cost, expendable unmanned vehicles that can see, fight and defend in place of a human soldier.
“Right now they are looking at concept designs and development demonstrations of these advanced unmanned systems with synergistic teaming,” he said. “What we’re going for is one pilot, or one operator, controlling eight, 10, 12 different UAS systems as wingmen for our rotorcraft systems … or a ground system,” he said. “How do we really get after that?”
Future drones will have to fly faster, farther and at less cost to the military, Singleton said. They also must keep up with the Army’s future manned platforms and interoperate with them, he said.
The Army already is hosting flight demonstrations for small, tactical unmanned aircraft for various missions. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC), the Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) are all on the case.