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UAV - The Unmanned Air Vehicle

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UAV - "Unmanned Air Vehicle, also called a drone, is a self-descriptive term used by the US military, the Israeli Defence Forces and others to describe the latest generations of pilotless aircraft".¹

Introduction and History of UAV's
Unmanned Air Vehicle is one of the most exciting and innovative ideas to come from the history of aircraft; it is a pioneer in the idea of aircraft production and flight. Aircraft has been a vital part of our human history since Orville and Wilbur Wrights first flight of Kitty Hawk in the early 1900's. They could only dream of what outcomes their discovery would bring about.

Image 1: Northrop Grumman Global Hawk RQ-4A.
According to Northrop Grumman Corporation's history of their UAV production, UAV's have been around since the 1940's; Radioplane Company (a purchase of Nortrhop Grumman's in 1962) received a contract from the DoD in 1939 for the primitive RP-1, and in 1940's they produced successive RPV's such as the OQ-2 and OQ-19.²
The time leading up to and during Cuban Misslile Crisis was a hard time for the United States, and the DoD needed to practice shooting down missiles in case the scenario ever really happened; Radioplane and another company, Ryan Aeronautics (as of 1999, an asset of Northrop Grumman), focused on producing targets for the DoD with the class BQM; Radioplane produced the RP-76 and (at this point under Northrop Grumman) the BQM-74; Ryan Aeronautics actually produced a whole family of targets during the 60's.²
Ryan Aeronautics actually produced the first modern semi-autonomous

Image 2: Global Atomics Predator RQ-1B.reconnaissance UAV (i.e. not an RPV) as part of DARPA's HAE ACTD program (the RQ-4A; as shown in Image 1); the other contender to the HAE ACTD was Lockheed Martin/Boeing's DarkStar (termed RQ-3A), but during the demonstration the DarkStar crashed and their program never recovered after that point.² TRW Inc. (now owned by Northrop Grumman) also prudced a CTOL reconnaissance UAV, the Hunter, which features an atypical front mounted prop, and is still used today. During the early 1990's, Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. produced a semi-autonomous, doughnut-looking VTOL aircraft, named the Cypher, which had the ability to hover; Sikorsky produced several ACTD's of the Cypher, but the program was never fully accepted (funded) by the DoD nor DARPA and died before the turn of the millenium.³
In the mid 1990's, Global Atomics Aeronautical Systems also hopped on the UAV bandwagon with their own CTOL the Predator (dubbed RQ-1A), which was the first accepted ACTD UAV for the RQ class (hence RQ-1); image 2 shows the second and

Image 3: Northrop Grumman JUCAS X47-B. updated version of the RQ-1A; the Predator was actually one of the first UAV's to be fitted with an AAM and ASM payload, making the Predator a very basic unmanned fighter.⁴ Global Atomics has taken the idea of the Predator and has adapted it to many different uses and programs, such as the Mariner for the Naval BAMS program, the ALTAIR as a high-altitude scientific-research testbed for NASA, and the I-GNAT for long range reconnaissance.
Northrop Grumman has also taken their star product, the Global Hawk, and applied it to many different solutions (the new applications are of type RQ-4B); the EuroHawk is the European version that Germany is looking at purchasing for SIGINIT and domestic reconnaissance purposes; Australia is looking at aquiring a version outfitted for domestic fishery reconnaissance to prevent foreign countries from using Australia's fishing waters; the Global Hawk has also been outfitted to meet the requirements of the Navy's BAMS program; lastly, a deal has been made with NASA to receive the RQ-4A ACTD's to be used with the NOAA; they plan to strap spherical probes onto the wings of the Global Hawk and fly it around in the atmosphere for 10 years,

Image 4: Northrop Grumman UCAR. dropping the probes, trying to provide hard evidence for global warming.⁵
Some companies have tried to produce VTUAV's. Yamaha developed the miniature helicopter RMAX RPV system; a direct application for this is in farming in Japan; the RMAX is being used to spread seeds and spray weeds remotely, reducing the need for multiple operators.⁶ Northrop Grumman tried to make a completely autonomous neural-networked attack VTUAV called the UCAR (see Image 4); 6 UCAR's would operate autonomously in a network and dynamically update their mission and COP based on dynamic events; interestingly enough, the UCAR used an intermeshing rotor system based off of Superior Helicopter LLC's K-MAX system, which is impressively manuverable and can be seen in this video (the intermeshing rotors eliminate the need for a rear prop to counter the torque cause by the single rotor system, allowing the power used for the rear prop to be diverted to some other use). The UCAR autonomous system software was actually test-piloted on one of

Image 5: Northrop Grumman Firescout.the RMAX systems; a video of this software demostration can be seen here. However, DARPA didn't think the UCAR program was worthy for funding at the time and it was flushed down the DoD drain. Another of Northrop Grumman's UVUAV's, which contrary to the UCAR, has had a lot of success with the DoD, Army, and Navy; the Firescout (see image 5) is an unmanned recon. and tactical targeting helicopter, which is loaded with tons of analysis equiment to act as a mobile eye.⁷
One of the unclassified FCS systems is an application of an unmanned strike bomber. Northrop Grumman was awarded DARPA's JUCAS contract to produce the X47-B (see image 3), which is a seemingly miniaturization of the B-2 Stealth Bomber; the only obvious difference, there are no pilots and it's about 1/7 the size; the X47-B will carry a payload of 4,500 lbs, and will be able to do fully autonomous takeoffs, landings, and inflight refueling.⁸