Contributions of UAVs to Future Military Operations

PRESENT-DAY AIRBORNE RECONNAISSANCE is performed almost solely by a manned force. Although the technology for unmanned reconnaissance systems has matured significantly over the past 30 years, until recently there has been little effort or incentive to exploit their obvious advantages. UAVs provide an impressive cost-benefit capability in an era of declining resources. The Gulf War proved that space-based surveillance assets and manned platforms alone could not satisfy the warfighter's desire for continuous, on-demand, situational awareness information. The users further understand that the cost of expanding the current inventory of collection systems is an unaffordable solution.

The JROC's and JWCA's newly developed concepts for winning wars are embodied in their Vision Force 2005, which parallels the Army's Force XXI, the Navy's Forward From the Sea, the Air Force's Global Reach, Global Power, and the Marine Corps' Operational Maneuver from the Sea. The key to success for all concepts is the simultaneous application of three elements, which will allow the commander to gain the initiative and dominate the battlefield:

The DARO's family of UAVs is critical to the development of battlespace awareness and to the success of the Vision Force 2005 concept. The JROC has validated the need for tactical and endurance UAVs to meet emerging warfighter demands for battlefield information. The tactical UAVs satisfy the requirement for battalion- through division-level surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure force protection, enhance situational awareness, and increase the effectiveness of organic fire support systems. The endurance UAVs will satisfy the joint force and theater commanders' needs for all-weather, broad-area coverage with options for continuous dwell. A mix of tactical and endurance UAVs, along with manned and space-based platforms, will thus provide reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities that expand our commanders' potential for battlespace dominance.

... I was looking at Predator [imagery displays] yesterday ... It was flying over an area ... at 25,000 feet. It had been up there for a long time, many hours, and you could see the city below, and you could focus in on the city, you could see a building, focus on a building, you could see a window, focus on a window. You could put a cursor around it and [get] the GPS latitude and longitude very accurately, remotely via satellite. And if you passed that information to an F-16 or an F-15 at 30,000 feet, and that pilot can simply put in that latitude and longitude into his bomb fire control system, then that bomb can be dropped quite accurately onto that target, maybe very close to that window, or, if it's a precision weapon, perhaps it could be put through the window.... I'd buy a lot of UAVs in the future.

Admiral William A. Owens
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
June 1995