NAVAL DRONES

by Dr Bill Powers, Research Fellow Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities Futures AssessmentDivision, Futures Directorate, earl.powers.ctr(at)usmc.mil  Military procurement and operations are moving from war to peace while unmanned systems research, development, and manufacturing are moving from military to commercial use.  As forces redeploy from operations in the Middle East, the peace-time use of unmanned systems (UMS) by the military will reflect a subsequent decrease. Concurrently, progress is being made to provide access to civil airspace, thus enhancing the potential use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) by civil authorities and commercial users. As these transitions occur, there will be myriad adjustments required by both manufacturers and users of UMS. This will provide opportunities for UMS to be used in ways that are currently only imagined…or demonstrated via YouTube videos. Commercial use of UMS is poised to become...

Editor's note: Reprinted with permission from the Naval Postgraduate School's  CRUSER News . by Professor David Jenn, NPS Electrical Engineering Faculty, jenn(at)nps.edu There are numerous advantages of wireless power transfer (WPT) for many remote energy source and battery charging applications. In a WPT system, power is transmitted wirelessly from a base station to a client. The concept was first demonstrated for vehicle propulsion in the mid 1960s. More recently, WPT has been used for charging wireless devices, and commercial WPT charging technologies have appeared on the market under the names Witricity and Energous. Measurement setup used to obtain efficiency and coil installed in a UAV hull (photo courtesy NPS). In a typical WPT system, prime power is provided by the base station, converted to radio frequency, and then transferred through space to a receiving coil or antenna. On the client side the received power is filtered, transformed in voltage, a...

Unmanned naval systems are rapidly reaching the limitations of physics with regard to their endurance.  Current internal combustion and electrically powered systems have several drawbacks.  In addition to range/weight issues, liquid fuel engines make for noisy UAVs which can compromise missions in some circumstances, such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconaissance.  Electrically-powered UAVs are quiet, but batteries do not approach the energy contained within a similar weight of fossil fuel.   This article clearly explains the physical limitations of current battery technologies.  Modern lithium-ion batteries are problematic due to their propensity to catch fire and explode.  SOCOM's billion dollar Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) fire  illustrated  why navies are not keen on carrying lithium-ion batteries at sea, especially undersea.  Clearly, alternative power technologies a...

Unmanned aerial systems have delivered affordable intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to smaller naval vessels that were previously unique to much larger platforms. In the past decade, small tactical unmanned aerial systems (STUAS) have enabled ground and sea forces operating in the Philippines, Southwest Asia, and Africa to see over the next ridgeline or island, well beyond their line of sight. The introduction of wireless power transmission will add yet another capability to the utility of these naval drones. Lockheeed Martin Skunkworks and Kent, Washington-based company Lasermotive recently demonstrated the ability to recharge the batteries of small, electrically-powered unmanned aircraft in-flight, radically extending the endurance of these tactical drones. In July 2012, a Stalker UAV powered by laser transmission flew for 48 hours in a wind tunnel. As a point of comparison, the normal endurance of this drone is only 2 hours, a difference of 24...