Past UAV Program Failures and Implications for Current UAV Programs.

摘要

There has been an increasing interest in the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) among the US armed services over the past 20 years. However, despite over four billion dollars in investment, the services have cancelled numerous development programs and achieved only marginal success with the fielded systems. This research will examine recent Department of Defense (DoD) UAV development efforts and identify common causes for the repeated failure of DoD UAV programs to become operationally robust. Two ongoing UAV development efforts, the RQ-4A Global Hawk UAV Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrator (ACTD) program and the X-45 Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) Advanced Technology Demonstrator (ATD) program, will then be examined for evidence that we are incorporating these lessons learned into our current programs.