1) What is the current status of this sector of the industry?
The total worldwide expenditure on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles currently amounts to $4.4-billion per year. This is mostly spent on worldwide military programs, used for surveillance on dangerous missions in dangerous areas. Currently 59 companies are manufacturing UAVs worldwide. 45 countries are building and buying UAVs and the US and UK are both working on tailless stealth designed UAVs. Traditionally, the leaders in UAV operations have been the US, UK, Israel, and South Africa, although South Africa has been losing its footing in recent years. In 2005, percentage of military aircraft deployed was only 5% UAVs, but that number had risen to 31% in the beginning of 2012, according to Defense Update. A recent entry into the UAV industry is Iran. They have begun to produce UAVs that among several other functions, are able to carry bombs. Their UAV program caught a lucky break when they captured a CIA Lockheed RQ-170 Sentinel and were able to see both the design and top secret surveillance information. Outside of the military realm, UAVs are used extensively in Japan for agricultural purposes. Since the rice farming industry has seen a large reduction of new farmers in recent times, UAVs are beginning to perform the work that as many as six individual farmers could previously accomplish. Also, UAVs are used by Border Patrol to patrol along the US-Mexico border for illegal aliens and drug trafficking.
2) What are the issues in these sectors that must be evaluated while moving
towards the future?
The biggest issue in the United States as well as throughout much of the rest of the world is integrating UAVs into the civilian airspace system. The FAA has issued 285 special flight permits for UAV testing in the National Airspace System. With the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2012, the FAA is now mandated to integrate UAVs into the NAS. Some concerns that the FAA has with this integration are what the aircraft will do in the event of a loss of signal from its controller, controller distractions, the lack of ability to spot and avoid traffic, and further congestion of the airspace.
3) What is the 5-10 year outlook for this sector?
As mentioned above, the FAA is required to integrate UAV operations into the NAS by 2015. This will include performance and operational requirements to increase safety. Several test zones for UAVs in the airspace systems are supposed to be up and running by 2013. Currently for testing, the FAA requires that the operator of the UAV be able to keep the aircraft in sight at all times, which severely limits the testing capabilities. The integration will allow for much greater use of UAVs domestically for civillian use. They are expected to be used for things such as whale and fish spotting and tracking, agriculture, spotting wildfires, assessing disasters, and police work. UAVs are forecasted to be an $80 billion dollar industry worldwide in another 10 years. Furthermore, worldwide spending on UAV payloads is expected to rise from $2 billion in 2009 to $5 billion in the 2018 fiscal year, as stated by Engineering News. The military is developing stealth UAV technology and has plans to retire its Predator fleet.
4) What is/will the government's involvement be in this sector?
Also previously mentioned is the Congressional mandate that the FAA integrate UAVs into the NAS by 2015. Additionally the military is deploying a much greater percentage of UAV flights than ever before because of budget cuts as well as the increased safety by not having to send a manned aircraft into dangerous war zones.
5) What are possible career opportunities in this sector (be specific, which may
require you to find actual job descriptions)?
With a simple search on Google, I was able to find jobs as a UAV operator (pilot), payload specialist, avionics specialist, and maintenance technician. It seems like there are an ample amount of jobs out there in the sector, especially as pilots. With the new testing program for the NAS, UAV pilots are needed in the FAA designated testing zones. As I have heard in the news and viewed while searching for jobs online, the most jobs in the UAV sector are for pilots, which is good for me. Employers included the National Guard, Textron, and several other private companies.
The forecasted growth over the next 5-10 years and onwards is quite remarkable. I wasn't aware that the FAA was required to integrate UAV operations into the NAS by 2015, pretty interesting! Regarding the issues in the UAV sector, it'll be interesting to see what'll happen with respect to 'see and avoid' type operations. Flying a UAV via an onboard camera really, really reduces the viewpoint of the pilot (the viewpoint simply being dead-ahead) as compared to someone actually flying an aircraft. And, as mentioned, what'll happen when the UAV loses its signal? It could potentially crash into a home, building, skyscraper, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe People's Republic of China is also getting into the UAV realm with their Pterodactyl. From what information I could gather on the Internet, It appears to be similar performance and capabilities as the US' Predator and Reaper UAVs.
ReplyDeleteThis could translate into an arms race of UAVs over the next 15 years I feel. The US has been developing UCAVs for years. The notable ones are the X-47 and X-45. Both use a fighter jet turbofan engine. I am sure with the rise of China's military might, they are sure to follow suite. Even though there do appear to be some civil advances in UAV applications, I feel that the next two decades will see primarily a military growth of these aircraft.
Interesting fact of "the most spent on worldwide military programs". I believe UAV is the future in military operations, with the technology improving everyday and how advanced some of these UAVs are already with the predator its going to be interesting to see where it goes from here. In the 5-10 year outlook in the future like you brought up with the whale and fish spotting, wildfires and police surveillance. Once UAVs fully get integrated in the civilian world, jobs will be a high demand in the near future if they aren't already.
ReplyDeleteIn respect to the see and avoid issue I am very interested to see how this will be handled. As the integration of RVSM and NextGen type operations are implemented the awareness and technology are becoming a bigger issue therefore when pure robots are added to the calculation multiple issues will come to play. With UAV's taking the skies on a civilian level we will be looking at entirely different types of accidents and communications. I can understand the debates on safety and concerns.
ReplyDeleteI did not research the UAV, but reviewing everyone's blog, I find more and more of what the 5-10 year outlook has to offer. I believe if all aspects including agriculture, tracking wildfire and more, that would be a good implement. But the way our technology is developed but only so much placed on the forefront at a time, I believe it will take more than 5-10years to see all changes.
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