Evaluation of a Low Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Comprised of Commercial-Off-the-Shelf Components as a Military Research and Development Test-bed

摘要

The Vigilante is a Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), being used by the US Army Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) as a test-bed UAV for demonstrating the integration of various weapon and sensor payloads and manned-unmanned teaming efforts. Throughout numerous testing and qualification flights of this UAV the contractor team, consisting of Advanced Technology Incorporated (ATI) and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and the Government have encountered various performance, reliability and safety issues. Methods for determining what levels of assurance are needed to confirm that this UAV can be a safe system for all operators involved, while remaining affordable are being discussed. While safety of the system must remain a high priority, it must not defeat the main goal of having a low cost UAV system for testing various component integration issues for the Army.