"Prepared for the Air Force Special Operations Command"--Title page.

The U.S. Air Force's remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) have played a significant role in current operations in Southwest Asia. As the inventory of RPAs increases and new sensor technologies come online in the coming years, the Air Force has an opportunity to consider additional roles for these aircraft. Thoughtful study into these possibilities will ensure that, when the Air Force employs RPAs, they will help fill capability gaps or augment existing capabilities in moreefficient or more-effective ways. The purpose of this documented briefing is to describe a suite of tools developed by RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) to help the Air Force think through future roles for RPAs. It describes tools to evaluate platform selection and concept of operations (CONOPS) development, sensor performance against various targets, weapon effects, environmental factors, platform survivability, computational processing of data, and exploitation of sensor products. This document also explains how the separate analysis in each of these areas feeds into a mission level analysis, performed with PAF's Systems and CONOPS Operational Effectiveness Model (SCOPEM), and a campaign-level analysis using PAF's Force Structure Effectiveness (FSE) model. Use of these tools and models will help clarify how future RPAs can contribute to U.S. warfighting in cost-effective ways. The tools presented here are also useful for examining the effectiveness of new capabilities more broadly (e.g., directed energy weapons or electronic warfare capabilities); examining the effectiveness of new platforms in the context of the entire intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) force posture; and evaluating the most cost-effective ISR force structure to meet future operational needs.

This report is intended to help guide discussion of the utility of Air National Guard remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) in domestic missions, and it explores the policy and operational constraints that Air National Guard RPAs face.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) have seen unprecedented levels of growth during the last decade in both military and civilian domains. It is anticipated that civilian applications will be dominant in the future, although there are still barriers to be overcome and technical challenges to be met. Integrating UAS into, for example, civilian space, navigation, autonomy, see-detect-and-avoid systems, smart designs, system integration, vision-based navigation and training, to name but a few areas, will be of prime importance in the near future. This special volume is the outcome of research presented at the International Symposium on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, held in Orlando, Florida, USA, from June 23-25, 2008, and presents state-of-the-art findings on topics such as: UAS operations and integration into the national airspace system; UAS navigation and control; micro-, mini-, small UAVs; UAS simulation testbeds and frameworks; UAS research platforms and applications; UAS applications. This book aims at serving as a guide tool on UAS for engineers and practitioners, academics, government agencies and industry. Previously published in the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, 54 (1-3, 2009).

This book presents, in a comprehensive way, current unmanned aviation regulation, airworthiness certification, special aircraft categories, pilot certification, federal aviation requirements, operation rules, airspace classes and regulation development models. It discusses unmanned aircraft systems levels of safety derived mathematically based on the corresponding levels for manned aviation. It provides an overview of the history and current status of UAS airworthiness and operational regulation worldwide. Existing regulations have been developed considering the need for a complete regulatory framework for UAS. It focuses on UAS safety assessment and functional requirements, achieved in terms of defining an “Equivalent Level of Safety”, or ELOS, with that of manned aviation, specifying what the ELOS requirement entails for UAS regulations. To accomplish this, the safety performance of manned aviation is first evaluated, followed by a novel model to derive reliability requirements for achieving target levels of safety (TLS) for ground impact and mid-air collision accidents.It discusses elements of a viable roadmap leading to UAS integration in to the NAS. For this second edition of the book almost all chapters include major updates and corrections. There is also a new appendix chapter.