The Assn. for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show here last month was a chance to look at the industry's progress in meeting Pentagon demands for more unmanned systems. Some systems and companies are doing much better than others. But what's often not clear is why.

A comment from Vic Sweberg, director of Boeing's new Unmanned Airborne Systems (UAS) unit, underlines something many people overlook. Sweberg says the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operation is Boeing's biggest producer of aircraft in numbers. The production rate of the ScanEagle UAV, which was 35 vehicles a month at the beginning of the year, reached 54 a month by summer.

Considering that Boeing subsidiary Insitu delivered its 1,000th UAV in May, the program is clearly growing quickly. Moreover, the larger, multipayload Integrator is already in low-rate initial production and will start deliveries to an undisclosed U.S. government customer early in 2010.

Insitu offers military users an immediate commercial off-the-shelf solution for the same requirements as the Small Tactical UAS (Stuas) program, which will take several years to field. At the same time, Insitu can mature the Integrator's new avionics -- including a flight-control system from Rockwell Collins' Athena unit and a plug-and-play sensor bay -- and flow those technologies back into ScanEagle, as well as develop and field a common launch and ground system.

Like General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., Insitu didn't wait for military requirements before developing a vehicle. It also sidestepped the issues of training military operators and supporting UAVs in a hot battlefield by developing a concept of operations that allows civilian operators to fly ScanEagles from a central, relatively safe location to where the operators need them. Insitu continues to rely on Moore's law to deliver more capability in a small package.

One lesson Boeing learned is that small companies may be better at developing and building small vehicles. It has left Insitu as a quasi-independent company and linked up with family-owned Schiebel to sell the latter's CamCopter in the U.S.

On the other hand, a company like Aurora Flight Sciences can develop a lot of impressive capabilities -- such as the fan-lift, hybrid-powered Excalibur and the GoldenEye series UAVs -- without finding the same commercial success. With some strategic reappraisal, however, the company has stepped into the emerging business of optionally piloted vehicles (OPVs), teaming with Athena to develop an OPV version of Diamond Aircraft's DA42 light-twin airplane. Risks are mitigated by the fact that the Royal Air Force, which already operates the DA42 as a manned surveillance platform, is a likely early customer.

Another approach to the problem of operating UAVs is to develop more specific training programs. While the U.S. Air Force will train more UAV operators this year than fighter and bomber pilots, former fighter pilot and current Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Missy Cummings doesn't think the two have much in common. Speaking during a panel, she said UAV operators should be considered "more like air-traffic controllers" than pilots. "Anyone should be able to operate a UAV with minimal training," she said. "The vehicles can fly themselves; what we need are people to manage these vehicles."

The U.S. Army uses a mix of enlisted trainees and contractors to fly its UAVs, and Col. Greg Gonzales, Army project manager for unmanned aircraft systems, says that while 95% of the service's RQ-7 Shadow UAVs are operated by military personnel, and the hand-launched RQ-11 Ravens are all controlled by soldiers, most RQ-5 Hunters and MQ-1C Warriors are flown by contractors. He says the Army recently deployed two contractor-operated Shadow platoons to theater to augment soldiers there.

Tim Owings, Army deputy project manager for unmanned aircraft systems, says the service has UAV programs at six facilities around the country, but is consolidating them at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah in the next 12-18 months, which should "reduce the integration timeline by about 75%."

With Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates determined to get more UAVs into theater as soon as possible, and the Navy making noise about leading the charge, the Army is moving forward in a hurry. A huge step in its UAV program occurred on Aug. 14, when an Army-piloted MQ-1B Warrior, armed with a Hellfire missile, fired the first missile from an Army UAV in Afghanistan.

Photo: Guy Norris