Review of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS)

TLDR

Unmanned Aircraft Systems are an emerging technology poised to transform warfare, civilian, and urban operations, with growing investment and demonstrated scientific utility, especially for hazardous missions. The study aims to address pilot‑avoidance and mission‑capability challenges to fully integrate UAS into the National Airspace System by the Next‑Gen era. UAS are increasingly employed across diverse public missions—including border surveillance, wildlife surveys, military training, weather monitoring, law enforcement—and for ISR, security, environmental monitoring, and remote sensing.

Abstract

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) is an emerging technology with a tremendous potential to revolutionize warfare and to enable new civilian applications. It is integral part of future urban civil and military applications. It technologically matures enough to be integrated into civil society. The importance of UAS in scientific applications has been thoroughly demonstrated in recent years (DoD, 2010). Whatever missions are chosen for the UAS, their number and use will significantly increase in the future. UAS today play an increasing role in many public missions such as border surveillance, wildlife surveys, military training, weather monitoring, and local law enforcement. Challenges such as the lack of an on-board pilot to see and avoid other aircraft and the wide variation in unmanned aircraft missions and capabilities must be addressed in order to fully integrate UAS operations in the NAS in the Next Gen time frame. UAVs are better suited for dull, dirty, or dangerous missions than manned aircraft. UAS are mainly used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), border security, counter insurgency, attack and strike, target identification and designation, communications relay, electronic attack, law enforcement and security applications, environmental monitoring and agriculture, remote sensing, aerial mapping and meteorology. Although armed forces around the world continue to strongly invest in researching and developing technologies with the potential to advance the capabilities of UAS.