Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / This project was initiated by ARMSCOR to research the feasibility of an unmanned aerial vehicle launching from and landing on a South African Navy ship. The objective of this project was to develop a strong basis for other similar projects.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The thesis research examines the emergence of wireless technology as a pragmatic baseline supporting the goals of the Department of Defense developing towards Network Centric Forces. Increased international attention to the field of surveillance has developed parallel to the desire to interconnect all possible friendly forces in military operations and the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Ubiquitous surveillance is accomplished by prototyping a network node that is then integrated on board of a military type unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Although the commercial off the shelf network solution itself is broadly deployed, little is known so far how to operate and manage an airborne surveillance network node. The author shows that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for networking purposes is not only possible but also manageable, even with remote operation of the unmanned aerial vehicle. The documented experiments over three generations of prototypes give insight about possibilities of how network infrastructure independence for the purpose of surveillance can be reached. / Kapitänleutnant, Federal German Navy

This thesis discusses two emerging technologies and how their integration with UAVs can improve the situational awareness capability of the Expeditionary Strike Group. Shotspotter is an acoustic gunshot detection system and Cursor on Target is an XML based schema to enhance information exchanges. When integrated with UAVs, these two technologies will drastically improve an ESG's efficiency and lethality in combat.

The Air Base has long been a potential target of attack for enemy planners. An effective way to attack the United States Air Force (USAF) is to avoid its usual dominance in the air and use an asymmetrical approach, attacking air bases with ground forces inserted into the Joint Rear Area. The history of airbase ground attacks from 1942 to 1994, documented in the book Snakes in the Eagles' Nest, shows that the dominant strategy employed by air base attackers has been the standoff attack. Roughly, 75 percent of all airbase attacks have been through the use of rockets or mortar fire from outside the airbase's perimeter defenses. In Vietnam, where the defenses against penetrating ground attacks were emphasized, this percentage rose to 96 percent. Historically, robust main operating bases, with passive defensive measures such as hardened facilities and redundant systems, have been able to withstand standoff attacks. The relative inaccuracy of the attacker's standoff systems and their limited ability to sustain fire on the air base minimized damage. Times have changed and the USAF finds itself operating in an expeditionary mode across the globe. Expeditionary Air Forces cannot depend on the luxury of operating off airfields with the robust infrastructure of main operating bases. In addition, the emergence of man portable, guided munitions for mortars and guided anti-tank missiles has increased the accuracy of potential standoff weapons. Finally, the sophistication of Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq and of modern radio-controlled model aircraft suggests the potential for attackers to build their own guided standoff weapons. The potential for a "one shot, one kill" standoff weapon is here today, negating the effectiveness of passive hardening measures. Disrupting these attacks will take new strategies. Understanding current Joint and USAF doctrine is the first step. Areas for further study include disrupting the enemy forces before they launch a standoff attack, intercepting the standoff round in flight and mitigating the damage on impact are discussed.

The Air Force is currently developing Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAV). The UCAV is projected for initial testing by 2010. However, after reviewing the Office of Secretary of Defense's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap for 2005 2030 / obtaining squadrons of UCAVs will cost billions of dollars and require decades to produce. The United States cannot afford to wait decades for unmanned weapons. Technology is spreading fast. Third world countries without stable economies and non-state actors are able to obtain/develop sophisticated weapons that are capable of destroying tactical aircraft. With sophisticated weapons easily obtainable, the risk of losing people in air combat is increasing significantly and that in turn is creating a level playing field for potential U.S. adversaries. Unmanned weapons technology can help America retain its military edge. However, since unmanned warfare capability is still decades away and is a multi-billion dollar project, America needs a quick fix. This study will argue that the most effective way to decrease risk-of-life and budget costs is to introduce F-16 Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) aircraft for combat. This thesis will answer the question: How can the government seize the unmanned aircraft advantages and decrease defense spending until the UCAV is operational? The answer to this question will illustrate how an effective F-16 UAS force can synchronize resources to properly complete UCAV development while instantly reducing risk of life.

MBA Professional Report / The goal of this MBA Project is to investigate possible disconnects between doctrine and practice in the employment of the Raven Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (SUAV). The Army's current Small UAV requirements are based upon the Future Combat System's Operations Requirements Document and has not been validated at the platoon or company level. The Raven SUAV is a Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) item that swiftly became the Army's Small UAV of choice for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Doctrine and Techniques, Tactics, and Procedures (TTP) have been written for the Raven SUAV; however, it is not standard practice for all units operating the system abroad. The last review of the SUAV operational requirements was conducted in 2003 but did not specifically address its usage on the battlefield. In an attempt to fill that gap, this project focuses on real-world usage of the Raven SUAV system. We compare doctrine versus practice using the Department of Defense's (DOD) Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Leadership, Personnel, Facilities (DOTML-PF) model as the primary logic construct. The report begins by providing a background of the Raven SUAV, to include its evolution from a COTS item to the Army's SUAV of choice, and how it has impacted the warfighter. Next, the authors provide an overview of DOTML-PF in order to provide a basis for comparing doctrine and practice. The study then looks in-depth at doctrine and practice using DOTML-PF as the model for revealing differences between the two. Finally, the authors analyze these differences and recommend solutions to mitigate shortfalls in actual Raven SUAV usage on the battlefield.--p. i.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The defense response against chemical and biological (Chem/bio) weapons has gained a renewed focus in light of the 11 Sept 2001 terrorist attack. A successful response to a Chem/bio attack would involve measuring and predicting the dispersion of a toxic cloud in the atmosphere. TheNPS Aeronautics and Astronautics Department is working together with the Meteorology Department on a technique to make toxic cloud measurements using an Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV). In support of this mission, the UAV will require precise and accurate air data (airspeed, angle of attack ["alpha"], and sideslip angle ["beta"]) so that wind data extraction can be carried out from air and inertial data for use in plume dispersion modeling. The efforts in this thesis concentrate on the air data system to produce precise and accurate air data for the support of the Chem/bio response UAV flights. The primary concerns are the choice and design of the air data system; the calibration of the system using the flow fields from computer simulation; and the processing of air data. The air data extracted will be used for wind determination so that the movement of the Chem/bio dispersed agent in the atmosphere can be predicted. / Captain, Republic of Singapore Air Force

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / This thesis surveys existing reliability management and improvement techniques, and describes how they can be applied to small unmanned aerial vehicles (SUAVs). These vehicles are currently unreliable, and lack systems to improve their reliability. Selection of those systems, in turn, drives data collection requirements for SUAVs, which we also present, with proposed solutions. This thesis lays the foundation for a Navy-wide SUAV reliability program. / Commander, Hellenic Navy

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. / The U.S. Army's Future Force is being developed as a faster, lighter, more rapidly deployable alternative to the current force structure. The Future Force will feature a smaller in-theater footprint and require the ability to cover a larger area of the battle space with intelligence-gathering assets. To support this development the Naval Postgraduate School and TRAC Monterey began to conduct research in the area of allocation of Future Force sensor platforms. A previous thesis developed the Sensor Allocation Model (SAM) for finding an appropriate mix and allocation strategy for organic Unit of Action sensors in a given threat scenario. The mix suggested by the model is robust to uncertainties in sensor performance and target quantity and location. SAM shows great promise for use as a screening tool in support of analysis of alternatives studies as well as in support of Army and Joint war fighting experimentation. It also has potential for use as an operational decision support tool for unit commanders. This thesis discusses three improvements to SAM. First, SAM has been translated into a programming language that easily can be implemented into any simulation environment. Second, it now contains more realistic constraints on sensor platform employment duration and distance. Third, the model estimates of sensor performance have been improved with a Probability Line of Sight model. Together, these improvements have greatly improved SAM's usability. / Captain, German Army

Energy e ciency is a critical constraint in wireless sensor networks. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of a large number of battery-powered sensor nodes, connected to each other and equipped with low-power transmission radios. Usually, the sensor nodes closer to the sink are more likely to become overloaded and subject to draining their battery faster than the nodes farther away, creating a funneling e ect. The use of a mobile device as a sink node to perform data gathering is a well known solution to balance the energy consumption in the entire network. To address this problem, in this work we consider the use of an UAV as a mobile sink. An unmanned aircraft vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft without a human pilot on-board, popularly known as a Drone. In this thesis, besides the use of the UAV as a mobile sink node, we propose an UAV-aided algorithm for data gathering in wireless sensor networks, called Humming- bird. Our distributed algorithm is energy-e cient. Rather than using an arbitrary path, the UAV implements an approximation algorithm to solve the well-known NP- Hard problem, the Traveling Salesman Problem (or TSP), to setup the trajectory of node points to visit for data gathering. In our approach, both the path planning and the data gathering are performed by the UAV, and this is seamlessly integrated with sensor data reporting. The results, using ns-3 network simulator show that our algorithm improves the network lifetime compared to regular (non-UAV) data gathering, especially for data intensive applications. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection