The US Congress has directed the FAA to make all necessary arrangements to enable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to operate in national airspace by 2015. Not that there are no UAVs outside the war zones already. Customs, low enforcement agencies, emergency response teams and the like are already using those little wonders to help their job and there can be little doubt: as time goes by, there will only be more of them around.
The next big step, which Congress wants the FAA to realize, is to allow UAVs out of their rather limited operational areas, right into airspace where traditional aircraft roam.
Is this a good idea?
Well, I guess it will be a while before we will see passenger aircraft fly with no pilots on board but if you ask the cargo folks, they will admit that they would just love to get rid of the second most expensive item after fuel, the flight crew. The cost saving would be enormous and if you can think out of the box, you must admit: why not?
In a research project not so long ago we were looking at the possibility of installing a “take me home” function on passenger aircraft that would simply take over control in case of a hijack situation and land the aircraft automatically at the nearest suitable airport, with the highjackers gnawing on their mustache. The important aspect of this exercise was that all experts agreed that this would be possible with existing aircraft and technologies. So why not fly routinely under remote control or fully automatically?
We will have to dedicate a separate article to the question of how safe or unsafe it is if we do not have a pilot to take things into his or her hand when things go wrong.
Here we will give some thought to what such an automatic bird means when it is mixed into conventional traffic. For the air traffic controller, the operation can be surprisingly transparent. If the UAV is flying under remote control, the air traffic controller will be talking to the pilot sitting on the ground somewhere and issuing clearances and instructions will be no different from when these go to an aircraft with the pilot actually on board.
A UAV flying on its own is a different proposition altogether. In this flight mode, the UAV will be using its sense and avoid capability and will keep clear of other traffic. It will be a kind of special-special VFR operation, at least initially. I guess at some time in the future, the controller will be using Controller-Pilot Digital Communications (CPDLC) messages which the UAV can also understand and fly the clearance or instruction, just like a human pilot would. But that is still some time in the future…
The fun will start when someone starts spoofing the GPS signals used by the UAV. Tests conducted at the White Sands missile range in New Mexico have shown that it is possible to fool the UAV into thinking that it was climbing… when it was in fact in level flight. To counter the mistaken belief, the on board electronics commanded a descent with the result that the UAV would have crashed into the ground had the remote operator not overridden the erroneous signals. Nice prospects, you will say.
Aircraft with a pilot on board may also experience GPS interference but with a human around, it is easier to discover that something is not as it should be. Actually, any gadget that uses GPS for positioning and timing, from the cellphone to the navigation system in your car, is sensitive to such unlawful meddling with the very weak signals of these space based systems. However, when it comes to an unmanned aircraft being denied its basic reference for knowing where it is in four dimensions, the implications are pretty scary.
Some experts say it is not easy to build a really effective spoofing tool and grab control over a UAV. Ok, so the bad guys will build something less effective and have a tough time targeting the UAV… but it will still crash even if not exactly where it was intended to. Not good enough.
Perhaps it will not come as a surprise that the military do already have solutions that make spoofing less of a problem. They may not want to disclose all they have up their sleeves but in view of the incredible economic importance GPS has achieved, the pressure to share at least some of their anti-spoofing technology will be enormous.
Of course you may still be pondering the question: why bother with these unmanned aircraft? Their proliferation has already given the answer: safety and economy.
Safety in terms of not sending a human into harm’s way is of course primarily a benefit the military is so fond of but there are other missions outside the battlefield that carry danger and which can be performed by an unmanned aircraft admirably without risking a human life. This is a good enough reason in itself.
But economy is almost as important. With resources across the board becoming scarcer and scarcer but threats increasing everywhere, any solution that can potentially reduce the cost of aerial response is something that cannot be ignored. Weather we are talking about law enforcement or disaster relief, the need is there while the funds available are dwindling by the year.
Economic imperatives have always been huge technology drivers and this is what we are seeing in the wish to have UAVs integrated into National airspace as soon as possible.
Of course the FAA will have its job cut out for it to find a safe and efficient solution. But beginning early is a good thing. It will give a head-start in research and technology development to the US and a much improved competitive position in the rest of the world.
Hopefully they will carry through what Congress wants… even if a little late.
