UAS Assigment

UAS Mission

Every year billions of dollars in property damages and loss of many lives are the consequences of enormous wildfires into the United States territory. The Government and private sectors agencies have the responsibility to reduce and respond quickly and effectively to this threat. The mission is to demonstrate the potential capabilities that Unmanned aerial systems UAS have in the US Forest Service, with the objective to provide fire intelligence to management teams. The first platform system outline here is the NASA Ikhana, it is a modified Predator-B (MQ-9) UAV with the altitude of 45000 feet. This autonomous, onboard processing transfer information to the ground personal dealing with the wildfires (V. G. Ambrosia, 2010). The information from the satellite is not completed to monitor individual events that are why NASA needs to get the support of airborne vehicles for thermal sensor data observations. This has impacted greatly the recollection of information, performance, fuel burned. and additional by automating onboard sending information to the ground personal (V. G. Ambrosia, 2010).

The second UAS platform considered to be used in the wildfire surveillance system is the Helicopter base UAS. (Enric Pastor, 2011). This UAS system is good to operate in difficult terrains with the future to provide very important data information to the air and ground squads. The report stated that “The UAV is the Sky Eye system; it is a helicopter base UAS platform that facilitates the development of wildfire remote sensing applications providing tactical support to wildfire monitoring” (Enric Pastor, 2011).  The third UAS platform considered in gathering information to deal with wildfires is  “the ALTAIR high-altitude, long Endurance (HALE) UAS,  which has the potential to increase the image resolution and update rates over satellites base systems” (V. G. Ambrosia, 2010).  Possible applications with some low altitude short endurance (LASE) could  be incorporated into this mission, but, there are some important issues as latency and limited communication ranges that have to be resolved before they could be used in the wildfires business (David W. Caster, 2011). In general, all these systems have showed Tobe very efficient in their mission for the wildfire disaster control. Actually, there are limited regulations for these systems. For the UAS integration into NAS, issues as air safety, airspace operation, mission, and system safety and system performance are the most important considerations for this UAS integration into NAS (Corcoran, 2014). The UAS limited regulations are restricting their full operation. There is a need education at all levels in the regulatory agencies to provide rapidly attention to the UAS growing industry.

References

 

Corcoran, M. (2014). Newsgathering applications of Unmanned aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in covering conflict, civil unrest and disaster. Drone Journalism:.

David W. Caster, D. B. (2011). Cooperative Forest Fire Surveillance using a team of small unmanned air Vehicles.

Enric Pastor, C. B. (2011). Architecture for a Helicopter-Base Unmanned aerial systems wildfire surveillance system.

V. G. Ambrosia, S. T. (2010). The Ikhana Unmanned airborne system (UAS) western states fire imaging missions: from concept to reality (2006-2010).

     

     

 4-4 -   Research: UAS in the NAS.

Separation of manned aircraft is controlled by the pilot, with the procedure that is called seen-and-avoid, here the pilot scans out the window and look for traffic. This procedure works for VFR and IFR flights. Another way of separation in manned aircraft is thru the use of radars and in the airplanes equipped with a transponder, the ATC established communication with the pilot of the aircraft and services as vectors, en-route navigation information, weather, approaches, and departures are provide to pilots. During the IFR Flights separation is granted as the controllers sequence the aircraft in most of the steps of the flight, all this is done via communication by radios. Actually, there are military and commercial airplanes and some in general aviation using the ADS-B technology with the possibility to see traffic around the aircraft. In the case of UAS, the first level of separation to consider is when the Drone is operated with the handle radio control and visual line of sight (LOS) is maintained by the operator at all times. More advanced technology for BLOS has been designed for the sense-and-avoid where the UAS can detect obstacles and transmit the information to the ground station or flight aircraft where the remote pilot will respond to the information. The cameras of the UAS cannot scan as the human eye does. But their use help in the sense-and-avoid procedure when it is been used by the ground station, Pilot. For UAS on semi-autonomous and Autonomous systems with the use of artificial intelligence algorithms, the UAS can take self-decisions for the procedure to perform in the event of sense-and-avoid or separation Situation.

            Sizes for UAS are grouped by category 1 to 5 and they are based in:

“Max gross weight, Normal operating altitude and air speed. And according to with the airframe systems they are also classified as High altitude long endurance (HALE), Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE), Medium range or tactical (TUAV) and Close range (UAV), Mini UAV (MUAV) Micro UAV, Nano air Vehicle (NAV), Unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAR) Unmanned combat rotorcraft (UCAR), Vertical take-off UAV (VTUAV) and Optionally Piloted aircraft (OPA)” (University, November 2015).

By comparing the UAS airframe Systems, considerations for operation of the UAS into NAS are; the Class of airspace, the equipment on board, capabilities of the aircraft, size, ground and air control, and the mission.    

            The modern technology used in the manned aircraft should be considered to be adapted to the UAS is the installation of transponders according to with the FAA rules for Classes of airspace aircraft equipment requirement. Also, by applying the FAA ADS-B (Administration, 2015) requirement for the UAS operations. Regulations for the operation of the UAS with the FAA Next-Gen programs should be used. Education, training and regulations to operate the UAS into NAS should be established as in manned aircraft.

References

Administration, F. A. (2015). NextGen Programs; ADS--B.

University, E.-R. A. (November 2015). Unmanned Systems; Airframe, Flight Control, and Powerplant Systems.