Unmanned Systems Program Review Air Day: Military Hones, While Commercial Hopes
Chris Bertram. AUVSI photo.
While Defense Department capabilities are finally riding the crest of the wave of the influx of unmanned aircraft technology, the commercial sector is still eyeing the horizon for its big wave, according to the Air Day speakers at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems Program Review 2014.
The day kicked off with keynote speaker Chris Bertram, majority staff director of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, who addressed the industry’s difficult task of integrating into the National Airspace System.
To win full rights to fly, “you should all think about engaging broadly on aviation issues and not just your issues,” he said. He warned that unless the unmanned community addresses the streamlining of modernization and the regulatory regime of the Federal Aviation Administration, “it will always be difficult for you to be integrated fully into the airspace system.”
Bertram expressed a duality in opinions of the FAA as of late from the aviation community at large. While stakeholders have a high level of confidence in the agency’s ability to manage the day-to-day operations of air traffic control, “there’s not a lot of confidence by stakeholders that the FAA can actually pull off … NextGen, which they’ve been working on for almost 10 years now.”
NextGen, the FAA’s future plan for modernizing the operations of air traffic control, is the latest in a string of update attempts by the agency for the last few decades, many of which came at a high price tag and went on to fail.
Bertran said the UAS community is in a unique position on Capitol Hill.
“There’s a lot of interest in your industry on Capitol Hill by the members,” he said. “It is an issue that is front and center that the members talk about.”
The FAA faces another hurdle in 2015, in addition to its task to integrate unmanned aircraft into the NAS — the agency faces another round of reauthorization. The current reauthorization, which green lighted the future integration of UAS, expires in September, and “it’s a fairly complex piece of legislation,” he warned.
Dyke Weatherington, from the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, had a firmer perspective on the future of UAS in the military. However, another round of sequestration threatens to turn the Department of Defense’s budget upside-down.
“It’s a difficult time for the DOD,” which might face a slash of $50 billion in funding if sequestration persists, said Weatherington. The department would like to retire older systems so it can field newer capabilities, but it cannot provide the levels of science and technology and research and development funding it would like, and “that is a very large concern ... in maintaining our technological superiority from our near-peer counterparts.”
However, he said the DOD has enjoyed a high level of success with its unmanned aircraft, particularly related to safety and more fleshed out concepts of operations than the initial rush to field that occurred during the ramp up of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I am extremely happy to report that DOD has worked hard on that problem over several years, and in this year we have demonstrated and are beginning to deploy operation systems that largely solve that problem for DOD,” he said.
“For the current fight … DOD is finishing up that acquisition,” he said. The department has bought up “a large number of systems at the small end, fewer systems in the middle and the large systems, obviously the fewest of those.”
Unmanned aircraft also have a uniquely high safety rating, he said.
“From my perspective, there is no unique issue with unmanned systems and safety compared to manned systems,” he said. “In fact, the casualty rate for DOD in 12 years is zero [and] you can’t say that about any of the major manned systems.”
