Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Replacing the Army's Comanche Helicopter?

Abstract

This strategic research project explores the possibility of unmanned aerial vehicles replacing the Comanche Helicopter in its doctrinal missions. This research consolidates the aviation critical tasks required to support reconnaissance, security, and movement-to-contact missions, evaluates the capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles, and analyzes unmanned aerial vehicles capabilities against those aviation critical tasks. This research will also consider likely future unmanned aerial vehicle capabilities as well. Though key UAV capabilities are equal to or better than similar systems in the Army's current helicopters, this analysis reveals that unmanned aerial vehicles can only perform 67% of the reconnaissance critical tasks, 50% of the security critical tasks, and 25% of the movement-to-contact critical tasks required to achieve mission success. These percentages demonstrate that unmanned aerial vehicles cannot fulfill the role of the Comanche Helicopter.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 07, 2003
Accession Number
ADA414557

Entities

People

  • Joseph E. Thome Jr.

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Autonomous Navigation
  • Computer Programming
  • Detectors
  • Helicopters
  • Jet Propulsion
  • National Security
  • Optical Detectors
  • Reconnaissance
  • Synthetic Aperture Radar
  • Target Recognition
  • Unmanned Aerial Systems
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Unmanned Systems
  • Unmanned Vehicles
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Military Engineering.
  • Military History / Militaries and War Studies
  • Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Autonomous Capabilities and Mission Reconnaissance.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - UAVs