US Army assesses survivability of UAVs in contested airspace

摘要

The US Army is actively chasing new technologies to help it operate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in contested airspace, but service representatives caution that survivability enhancements for tactical UAVs might be an expensive trade-off. In Iraq and Afghanistan UAVs have operated in a relatively benign environment as coalition forces have had total air superiority. However, that may not be the case in future conflicts and army officials are taking a measured approach to bolstering survivability for tactical UAVs. "It's all a balance between how much cost you want to build into the system," Tim Owings, the service's deputy project manager for unmanned aerial systems (UASs), said at the AUVSI symposium in Washington, DC.