Aquila UAV
The Army's first major UAV acquisition effort was the Aquila program.
This program started in 1979 and was originally estimated to cost
$123 million for a 43-month development effort, followed by planned
expenditures of $440 million for procurement of 780 air vehicles and
associated equipment. By the time the Army abandoned the program in
1987 due to cost, schedule, and technical difficulties, Aquila had
cost over $1 billion, and future procurement costs were expected to
have been an additional $1.1 billion for 376 aircraft.
The original mission for Aquila was to have been relatively
straightforward: it was to be a small, propeller-driven aircraft
(portable by four soldiers) that could provide ground commanders with
real-time battlefield information about enemy forces located beyond
the line of sight of ground observers. As development was nearing
completion, it became evident that the requirement for the small
aircraft size conflicted with the many avionics and payload-related
items the Army wanted to put inside the UAV. Aquila was expected to
fly by autopilot, carry sensors to locate and identify enemy point
targets in day or night, use a laser to designate the targets for the
Copperhead artillery projectile, provide conventional artillery
adjustment, and survive against Soviet air defenses. Achieving the
latter expectation required development of a jam-resistant, secure
communications link, but using the secure link degraded the video
quality, which interfered with the ability to do targeting. During
operational testing in 1987, Aquila was only able to successfully
meet mission requirements on 7 of 105 flights.
Sources and Methods
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/aquila.htm
Created by John Pike
Maintained by Steven Aftergood
Updated Friday, November 26, 1999 4:09:57 PM
