GPS World

Tag: small unmanned aircraft system

  • New report predicts small drone threats to infantry units

    The emergence of inexpensive small unmanned aircraft systems (sUASs) has led to adversarial groups threatening deployed U.S. forces, especially infantry units, according to a new report.

    Although the U.S. Army and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) are developing tactics and systems to counter single sUASs, the report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine emphasizes the need for developing countermeasures against multiple sUASs — organized in coordinated groups, swarms, and collaborative groups — that could be used much sooner than the Army anticipates.

    The committee that conducted the study developed a classified report that details its findings and recommendations, along with an unclassified public version that discusses key background issues.

    “Hobby drones are easy to buy, their performance is improving dramatically, and their cost has dropped significantly; now with millions of them around the world, they pose a growing threat to the U.S. warfighting forces if used for nefarious intents,” said Albert Sciarretta, president of CNS Technologies and chair of the committee. “The threats could be consumer items like hobby drones, modified consumer items such as could be assembled with online components, and customized ones, like built-from-scratch aircraft.”

    The committee that authored the report was asked by the U.S. Army to assess the threat from sUASs, especially when massed and operating collaboratively, examine the current capabilities of military units to counter them, assess related human performance issues, and identify technologies appropriate for short- and long-term science and technology investments by the Army.

    Readily available, high-performance, sUASs can be easily modified to carry lethal weapons, identify targets at long ranges, and conduct electronic warfare attacks. As the capabilities of hobby drones improve at a rapid pace, the added threat from coordinated groups, swarms and collaborative groups of sUASs will pose a substantial challenge to U.S. armed forces, the report says.

    “Modified hobby drones can be used to support conventional and unconventional attacks. For example, they can be fitted with external or embedded explosives designed to explode on contact,” added Sciarretta. “In addition, they can be used by adversaries to jam our radio frequency signals and to support their information operations. When these sUASs are combined in groups or swarms, their threat is significantly enhanced.”

    Countering sUASs first requires detection and identification, which is difficult because they are small, fly at low altitudes, can have highly irregular flight paths, and travel at a range of speeds, the report says. Moreover, a sUAS can also take advantage of the surrounding environment, for example, by concealing itself among trees or blending in with a flock of birds.

    Even after threats are identified, countering sUASs can be challenging, the report says. The Army and DOD have invested significantly in technologies in response to these threats, often focusing on detecting radio frequency transmissions of the sUASs or their operators.

    However, the report highlights that today’s consumer and customized sUASs increasingly can operate without radio frequency command-and-control links by using automated target recognition and tracking, obstacle avoidance, and other capabilities enabled by software.

    The study was sponsored by the U.S. Army.

    Copies of Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System (CUAS) Capability for Battalion-and-Below Operations are available from the National Academies Press or by calling 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242.

  • NOAA picks Black Swift sUAS for fire observation

    NOAA picks Black Swift sUAS for fire observation

    Aircraft to Provide Wildfire Measurements in Support of NOAA Fire Weather Forecasting

    The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has selected a small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) for wildfire measurements and observations in support of its FIREX field mission and the fire weather forecasting initiative.

    Black Swift Technologies will deliver to NOAA a tightly integrated system consisting of an airframe, avionics and multiple sensors capable of research-quality measurements of CO2, CO, aerosol, RH, p and T in wildfire plumes, as well as multispectral high-resolution maps of wildfires.

    The SuperSwift sUAS will be operated by the University of Colorado’s Integrated Remote & In Situ Sensing Program (IRISS) in close collaboration with NOAA.

    “One of the purposes of IRISS is to work with the science community to develop and deploy platforms which make primarily in situ measurements,” said Brian Argrow, IRISS director. “This naturally lead us to partnerships with NOAA on the science perspective, and to Black Swift Technologies for their sUAS technology and expertise. It’s a partnership that looks like a three-legged stool with the science interest of NOAA, the technology and engineering expertise of IRISS, and the unique sUAS platform designed by Black Swift Technologies, as the corresponding legs.”

    The FireFOX sUAS is based on Black Swift’s commercially available SuperSwift airframe and SwiftCore Flight Management System — designed to be cost-effective, powerful and easy to operate in the field.

    The SuperSwift is specifically engineered to meet the demands of high-altitude flights through strong winds and damaging airborne particulates typical of nomadic scientific field campaigns in harsh environments.

    The SuperSwift sUAS has a forward-located, spacious, interchangeable nose-cone payload bay. (Photo: Black Swift)

    “While there are many sUAS manufacturers for agencies like NOAA to consider, most are simply not suitable for scientific atmospheric measurements,” said Jack Elston, CEO of Black Swift Technologies.

    The SuperSwift addresses NOAA’s requirements for endurance and operational radius (> 2 hours and between 30 to 60 km) sufficient for fire observations, its payload capability (up to 5 pounds), and its unique forward-facing payload bay, “ideal for atmospheric sampling and for easy instrument package swapping,” Elston said.

    The ultimate goal of NightFOX is to perform nighttime in situ measurements of wildfire plumes and remote measurements of wildfire properties, with the measurement data used to improve fire weather forecasting.

    Because of safety concerns and dangers associated with nighttime operations, manned aircraft flights are limited to daytime operations. Ground observations using a mobile laboratory provide detailed chemical information on fire plumes, but lack information on plume spatial distribution to put the point measurements in context.

    UAS observations are the only technology capable of this task. sUAS observations can provide useful information for firefighting efforts by accurately detecting fire perimeter and identifying fire hotspots, but have not attempted to make measurements relevant to studying fire emissions or incorporate observations into fire forecast models.

    “Our proposed work, if successful, will significantly advance the integration of UAS-based observations of wildfires into fire-weather modeling and forecasting,” said Ru-Shan Gao, principal investigator, Chemical Sciences Division, Earth Systems Research Laboratory, NOAA.

    The collected data will also provide otherwise missing data for studying the impact of North American wildfires on the atmosphere and human health. It will ultimately support better land-management decisions and practices, contributing to NOAA’s core mission to advance understanding and prediction of the Earth system to enhance society’s ability to make effective decisions.

    IRISS, a pillar of the CU Boulder Grand Challenge, is a multi-disciplinary team that leads the design, development and deployment of novel remote and in-situ sensing systems to exploit mobility enabled by aerospace systems to enhance data collection from the ground, in the atmosphere and from
    space.

    With its partners, IRISS explores commercial opportunities and fosters discussions on the ethical, legal, and social policy implications of new technologies and big-data collection.

    The existence of a sUAS capable of carrying the necessary instruments routinely through harsh environments adds an invaluable contribution to the calibration and validation of data collected from ground- and satellite-based methods.

    The innovations of the SuperSwift, including the total sensor suite, can be used for scientific research by federal and state public agencies and other state-funded laboratories to collect data on coherent atmospheric structures such as smog, volcano plumes, wildfire smoke, chemical fires, forest humidity, and studying oil and gas field flares for calibration/validation of satellite measurements.

    “NOAA is interested in a UAS observational system (UASOS) that can use be used for fire-related measurements, and so in a sense what we want to know is when and where does the fire flow and ultimately what kind of fire and air quality will result regionally,” Gao said. “We want to monitor the fire and incorporate the remote and in situ measurements into a fire forecast model so ultimately we’ll be able to do better fire forecasts that will help firefighters better fight the fire and keep human and property losses to a minimum.”