German Made Finnish Agile UAV and Advanced UAV In Project Programe 2013

The nEUROn programme, led by Dassault but involving several other European industries and sponsored by several governments, is the closest approximation to a pan-European programme currently in existence and is eerily similar in profile to Northrop Grumman’s UCAS-D, though smaller and with no apparent plans for maritime testing as yet. Saab’s Sharc and Filur programmes have fuelled the company’s experience in the
development of low observable systems and thus earned it its place in the nEUROn programme.

EADS’ Barracuda UCAS, resurrected in the form of a second air vehicle after the first had the misfortune to crash in Spain during the test flight programme in 2006, will support a joint German/Finnish Agile UAV demonstrator project through 2013. The same company’s Advanced UAV (AUAV) is not currently scheduled to achieve full operational capability until some time after 2018, while the joint Dassault/Thales UAS proposal to meet a current French Air Force ISR requirement could be available as early as 2012, according to Thales’ managers. The issue facing Asian observers of the UCAS scene, therefore, is neither one of a lack of choice nor, necessarily, one of the weaponisation of a UAS making technology issues more complex. As long as gravity continues to work, UCAS operators can be relatively confident that weapon separation from the air vehicle will take place and current generation fire-and-forget missiles and smart munitions already dispense with the need for human intervention once launched.

The question at issue is rather how to integrate UCAS into current concepts of operations and this is as much a cultural issue as it is a technical or doctrinal one. The desire to derive maximum benefit from the unique
capabilities that mature UCAS systems will afford military planners will drive such change whether the system is tweaked to fit the CONOPS or the CONOPS itself is developed around existing systems capabilities.
There is not a major regional power in the Asia-Pacific region that could not potentially benefit from the integration of UACS into current and future force mixes though the complexity of doing so should by no means be underestimated. Some nations may be planning to weaponise existing indigenous UAS air vehicles
and achieve de facto UCAS status for them. Others may well be waiting to see what lessons can be derived from ongoing US and European UCAS development programs and operational testing.

There will be a price to pay for those lessons, a price inevitably reflected in the acquisition costs across the negotiating table. But as long as there is adequate choice and therefore market-induced competition, that price is unlikely to be too high to warrant paying. And the time for Asian nations to start this process is now – at
the very moment that many of the developers (and, all too frequently, their parent governments) are seeking greater international participation, collaboration and support.