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DUGWAY PROVING GROUND — Dugway's newest persona was on display Thursday morning as the Army hosted its first public demonstration of a system that allows a single controller to direct video reconnaissance from a series of manned and unmanned aircraft.
The demonstration included Apache and Kiowa Warrior helicopters and four unmanned aircraft, ranging in size from the 3,600-pound Gray Eagle to the 4.4-pound hand- launched Raven.
The Army chose Dugway as the headquarters for its coordination efforts about three years ago because of "the tremendous amount of open, restricted airspace, where we can fly with impunity," said Tim Owings, deputy project manager of the Army's Unmanned Aircraft Systems.
"We realized we needed to centralize and co-locate all of the programs related to interoperability," Owings said, estimating that more than a dozen defense contractors are actively involved in the projects at Dugway.
Demonstrations like the one on Thursday will likely be repeated every few years and involve other branches of the service in the future, Army representatives said.
Battlefield use of the systems that coordinate unmanned aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan has accelerated the development of new capabilities. "What would normally take about 10 years has been done in probably two-and-a-half years," Owings said.
We have new manned and unmanned teaming. Today, we're passing video and intelligence from platform to platform, increasing the flexibility the commander has on the ground. It allows commanders on the ground to make tactical decisions they couldn't before.
–- Tim Owings
Beyond the battlefield, peacetime uses of some of the unmanned aircraft and their real-time video transmission capabilities are also on the landscape: search and rescue, border patrol and disaster relief reconnaissance.
Todd Smith is the program manager for the Shadow, an unmanned aircraft with a 20.4-foot wingspan that can fly for nine hours. He calls its capabilities "3-D" for dull, dirty or dangerous. "Dull" could include hour upon hour of border patrol surveillance; "dirty" was demonstrated when the Shadow carried radioactivity sensors as it flew the area around the nuclear power plant damaged by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan; "dangerous" describes its wartime capabilities.
Lt. Col. Scott Anderson, the Army's product manager for the Shadow, said civilian uses of the unmanned aircraft are likely to increase significantly once the aircraft and the soldiers who operate them are brought home from the battlefield.
Anderson said those soldiers will need training time with their equipment, something that often translates into search-and-rescue type missions, especially involving the National Guard. About 30 National Guard units currently have the Shadow in their inventory, Smith said.
The Utah National Guard has operated Apache attack helicopters since they were introduced. The Apache flying in Thursday's demonstration had the capability to observe video feeds from all of the unmanned aircraft while transmitting its own video images. An upgrade to the Apache due in November would allow the helicopter crew to actually fly the unmanned aircraft.
One of the systems tested Thursday that has not seen battlefield action yet is the "triclops" video sensor system on the Gray Eagle. Simply put, the unmanned aircraft has three separate video systems that can simultaneously be trained on different targets — and controlled by different soldiers either in the air or on the ground.
Additional testing will likely include a triclops system on other unmanned aircraft.
The interaction program is called the Manned Unmanned Systems Integration Capacity, or MUSIC.
"We have new manned and unmanned teaming. Today, we're passing video and intelligence from platform to platform, increasing the flexibility the commander has on the ground," Owings said. "It allows commanders on the ground to make tactical decisions they couldn't before."
Adding unmanned aircraft to the battlefield also puts more distance between the soldiers flying them and from remote locations, and potential harm, Anderson said. "That is always a good thing."
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