UAV-Sensor Markets: The Rich Get Richer

摘要

Overall US unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV) budgets have been projected, in various government and media sources, at values between $550 million and $2 billion per year over the next few years. There are forecasts for the European market to climb from S135 million to $312 million from 2001 to 2010. But with little internal consistency (how UAV funding is broken out varies considerably), even FY03 US value projections have ranged from less than $1 billion to $1.6 billion in different sources. These top-line numbers only serve to confuse reality, generally with the goal of portraying UAVs as the dominant new market for the rest of the decade. This article, based on a 250-page, program-by-program survey and forecast of the total international UAV market over the next 10 years, the World Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Forecast by Teal Group Corp. (Fairfax, VA), will provide the results of a bottom-up analysis of UAV-sensor funding through FY12. Forecasts are based on cumulative funding forecasts, individually analyzed, of all significant UAV-sensor programs. These results will provide some surprises but primarily show that the only truly large markets ― the only programs equivalent to any number of major manned platform sensor programs ― will remain Global Hawk and, perhaps in the out years, UCAVs. To put funding in perspective, if the FY04 Department of Defense (DoD) budget plans around $870 million for all UAV spending, it also plans more than $5.5 billion for just three short-range manned fighter programs. On the other hand, according to one source, this UAV funding is up from only $360 million in FY01 and $760 million in FY02.