Trust By Design
Abstract
The established Department of Defense policies regarding the standards that guide designed reliability of medium to large unmanned aircraft (UA) are no longer sufficient to support the trust necessary to employ the technology effectively. Unmanned aircraft technology has reached an evolutionary phase where the policies need to be updated in order to allow for future development. The current standards that govern unmanned aircraft safety and reliability are adequate, but the current policies allow UAS programs the ability to choose to save development cost/schedule by accepting reduced levels of safety and reliability, at the expense of higher life cycle costs resulting from higher attrition rates. The current policies regarding the UAS airworthiness standards that govern unmanned aircraft reliability are insufficient for three reasons. First, low reliability requires UAs to be restricted to airspace that prevents overflight of populated areas. Restricting the airspace that UAs can train in has inhibited the development and employment of the full capabilities of medium to large UAs, negatively affecting the trust in UAs by the operators, supported entities, and adjacent units. Second, a low-reliability aircraft does not make fiscal sense considering the current trend of increasingly costly payloads. Lastly, low reliability creates an unnecessary strain on the personnel and resources of units which operate UAs that are not easily replaced and require investigations after each loss. The level of designed reliability in an aircraft directly affects the degree of trust that can be applied to that aircraft. This paper focuses on the necessity of realigning the policies regarding the standard of reliability for Group 3-5 unmanned aircraft that is sufficient for the level of trust necessary for the missions that the medium and large unmanned aircraft are tasked with.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 31, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1057673
Entities
People
- Mathew Rice
Organizations
- Naval War College