Huge surge of UAS production is coming – NextGen is key to integration

Huge surge of UAS production is coming – NextGen is key to integration

Vicki Cox, Senior Vice President, NextGen, et al., lots of people in the FAA, DoD, NASA, and other, 3-15-12, [“Next Generation Air Transportation System Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research, Development and Demonstration Roadmap,” Joint Planning and Development Office, http://www.jpdo.gov/library/20120315_UAS%20RDandD%20Roadmap.pdf] E. Liu

According to industry forecasts, UAS operations will increase exponentially in a variety of key military and civil areas. About 50 U.S. companies, universities, and government organizations in the U.S. are developing over 150 different unmanned aircraft designs. Projections for 2010 to 2019 predict more than 20,000 UAS produced in the U.S., with a total of more than 35,000 2 produced worldwide2 . From an operational, infrastructure and safety perspective, this presents a number of challenges due to the diversity of aircraft, control stations, levels of autonomy, and communications methods. UAS span a wide spectrum of size, endurance, and performance characteristics, often different from manned aircraft. The solutions to these challenges will affect all NAS constituencies, but they will ultimately enable seamless integration of UAS in the NextGen NAS.
Massive civilian demand for UAs coming now, but new sensing is key to its success

Roberts, directs MITRE's independent research and development programs in civil aviation and air traffic management,

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Glenn Roberts, directs MITRE's independent research and development programs in civil aviation and air traffic management, 5-11, [“Research Challenge: The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen),” The MITRE Corporation, www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/2011/11_2464/11_2464.pdf] E. Liu

In recent years unmanned aircraft systems (UAS ) have become a critical component of our nation’s defense strategy. The Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) demand for UAS has grown exponentially, with the various branches of the military shifting their acquisition strategies strongly toward the use of unmanned aircraft for reconnaissance and other missions that are “dull, dirty or dangerous.” Industry experts see this military trend as presaging an even larger trend toward applying UAS to such domestic tasks as law enforcement, traffic monitoring, real estate sales, and crop dusting. Together, these emerging civilian applications and the needs of the military have produced a groundswell of interest in flying UAS intermingled with other civilian aircraft in the NAS. One major area of concern, however, is that all of the systems, rules, regulations, standards, concepts, tools, technologies, and procedures underpinning today’s air traffic management (ATM) systems were developed under the assumption of manned cockpit operations. In fact, the underlying concept of “see and avoid” assumes there is a pilot in the cockpit who is ultimately responsible for situational awareness and avoidance of surrounding aircraft. By contrast, in nearly all of today’s UAS operations the pilot operates the aircraft from a ground-based control station, using a command and control (C2) communications link to relay flight instructions in real time. A fundamental research question, therefore, concerns how to replace the traditional “see-and-avoid” function with an equally safe and effective “sense-and-avoid” function for UAS.
Squo Doesn’t Solve

UAS flights now cause accidents, collisions and hacking

Van Dyk, Department of Systems and Information Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia, et al., 12

Ryan N. Van Dyk, Department of Systems and Information Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia, et al., Pariseau, Daniel H. ; Dodson, Richard E. ; Martin, Brendan T. ; Radcliffe, Alexander T. ; Austin, Eni A. ; Haimes, Yacov Y. ; Andrijcic, Eva ; Guo, Zhenyu ; Werner, Jin H., 4-12, [“Systems Integration of Unmanned Aircraft into the National Airspace: Part of the Federal Aviation Administration Next Generation Air Transportation System,” Systems and Information Design Symposium (SIEDS), 2012 IEEE, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6215142] E. Liu

NAS: National Air Space

Glenn Roberts, directs MITRE's independent research and development programs in civil aviation and air traffic management, 5-11, [“Research Challenge: The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen),” The MITRE Corporation, www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/2011/11_2464/11_2464.pdf] E. Liu

Exploring Cooperative Airspace Concepts for UAS Integration (MSR)

Given projected increases in UAS utilization over the next 25 years, there is a compelling national need for a safe, secure, and scalable means of routinely integrating UAS into civil airspace. At present, UAS integration is neither routine nor scalable; it requires petitions to the FAA, issuance of FAA waivers, and the establishment, adherence to, and enforcement of segregated airspace and operational restrictions. While these temporary restrictions have succeeded in maintaining a high level of safety, the expected increase of both manned and unmanned aircraft in the NextGen timeframe suggests that seamless operation and integration of UAS and other aircraft within all domains of the NAS is a functional requirement that must be addressed.