UAVs

Applications for UAVs in the civilian world would be like: pipeline inspection, hurricane monitoring, traffic monitoring, aerial surveying, volcano monitoring, forestry inspection, oil spill tracking are just to name a few. In the United States for small UAVs you have to acquire a Certificate of Authorization (COA) through the FAA, but currently these certificates are only limited to federal, state, and local government agencies, and restricted flying to specified areas. The typical requirements for acquiring a COA include: Flights below 400 ft. agl, daytime operation in VFR conditions, range limited to Visual Line of Sight, and greater than 5 miles from an airport.

 

I do foresee UAVs integrating into the NAS, but for the use as I have stated above. I don’t think that there will ever be a demand for UAVs for the airlines, but maybe for some of the large cargo companies like UPS or FedEx. The problem I see with UAVs are when you start putting people in the skies with UAVs flying around and someone has not seen on and gets up close so they can get a picture. Plus, if a person is behind the controls they can only see what is shown on the screen in front of them so there is no sense of situational awareness where when you are the person flying the plane you are constantly looking around.

 

I would say that with the introduction of UAVs that it has changed military strategy. It has changed their strategy by arming the UAVs and taking out High Value Targets so then we don’t have to send in a plane that has a human on board. It also lets us stay over a target area for hours instead of only a few hours or minutes with the human-piloted planes or the satellites orbiting the earth. I would say that there integration has been efficient if you can send in a UAV that can stay on station for 10-12 hours instead of a pilot who is getting tired after 2 hours, then you are being more efficient cause then you don’t have to send up 1 or 2 more planes to do the job of just 1 UAV. Also, since the most of the UAVs are armed and with their long operation time that they can potentially become a game changer if your troops are under heavy attack.

 

Link to a job for UAV pilot at General Atomics https://sjobs.brassring.com/TGWebHost/jobdetails.aspx?jobId=792465&&JobReqLang=1&recordstart=1&JobSiteId=5313&JobSiteInfo=792465_5313&GQId=0&PartnerId=25539&SiteId=5313#4023BR

 

http://www.uavm.com/uavapplications.html