Widely acknowledged as ‘Trucks for payloads’, UAVs have revolutionised the modern battlefield. Ranging from intelligence gathering to tracking and targeting, UAV remote sensors have proved crucial in meeting the persistence-surveillance and situational-awareness needs of forces on the ground. As USAF Capt. Traz Trzaskoma, deployed in Iraq, recently stated: "real-time, accurate information on hostile movements enable us to reduce battlefield decision-making times from hours to minutes".

According to the US DoD UAV Roadmap, 10 out of 17 mission areas identified by US combat commanders that could potentially be addressed with UAVs require remote sensing.

Recent experience of military UAV remote sensors in various conflicts has increased demand and energised an already mature remote sensing market. Frost & Sullivan currently examining the global UAV remote sensing market, estimates the UAV remote sensing market to be worth over $8bn by 2015.

The three largest markets for sensors for UAVs are expected to be; Visual Camera for viewing live footage, Electro-Optic/Infra-Red (EO/IR) for day and night surveillance and thermal imaging, and RADAR, usually two types; Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), for large area scans and/or motion/direction indication (MTI) RADAR.

The evolution of UAV remote sensor requirements stems from the changes in military and homeland security missions. In the military market, new capabilities requirements are arising from emerging military doctrine. This includes shift to net-centric warfare (NCW) the rise of the propensity of Low intensity conflicts (LIC), the need for persistence, stand-off engagement and reduced tolerance for life losses.

UAVs typically perform better in these environments and can deliver better than legacy manned assets. For example, conflicts in urban environments increase the need to minimise collateral damage and increase the need for positive identification to discern combatants from civilians. This has become a priority for forces, driving the need for UAVs equipped with better remote sensors, such as visual cameras and EO sensors.

On the civil side, increasing homeland security means an increased demand for maritime and coastal surveillance operations, driving the need for RADAR systems. Increased demand for border monitoring, driving the need for EO payloads both for medium altitude long endurance (MALE) as well as tactical UAVs. Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR) is one of the fastest changing market segments. SAR systems, that up until recently could only be mounted on aircraft such as the Boeing 707 are being miniaturised and installed on tactical UAVs (TUAVs). In fact, EADS mini SAR weight as little as 4kg. Nevertheless, SAR systems are still too expensive to be widely used and therefore being referred to as ‘sensors for the rich’. There is a need to find a way to drive down the costs of these systems.

Some of the high profile procurement programmes presenting a need for remote sensors are being delivered towards the end of the decade and include, for Europe: Watchkeeper, EuroMALE and EuroHAWK (yet to be confirmed). In the U.S., these programmes include the Global Hawk, the Predator, the Shadow family and the Hunter – all requiring advanced remote sensors.

On top of that, technology demonstrators, such as Europe’s French led "Neuron" Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV), Finmeccanica's Sky-X UCAV, Boeing’s X-45, Northrop Grumman’s X-47 and UCAR (Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft) programmes are underway, and will require advanced remote sensors. The emergence of this niche will lead to the materialisation of more remote sensors markets.

In Asia-Pacific, the Australian Maritime UAV programme – AIR7000 and its Tactical compliment, the JP129 programme are both to be completed by 2009 and will require remote sensors with a Maritime focus.

For UAV remote sensor manufacturers, these UAV programmes, as well as potential upgrades for current platforms and future country requirements for UAV / UCAV / UCAR systems, present substantial potential for business.

The global UAV market is rapidly growing; meaning the number of operational systems is rising. Therefore, the number of types of systems is on the rise, as well as the prices of high-end systems. While risking in stating the obvious, every such air vehicle needs at least one remote-sensing payload.

UAV payload weight capabilities are also increasing, meaning more variety and sizes of payloads can be made available. Increasing average payload weights, and assuming a strong correlation between weight and cost, simply means better quality and heavier yet more expensive payloads are becoming available.

UAV airframe capabilities change slower than payload capabilities. This means that operators will upgrade the payload before the air vehicle. On top of that, in many cases it is the payloads capabilities that become the mission’s ‘bottleneck’ and therefore crucial for mission success.

An urban battle environment is ‘harder to sense’ in, since urban sensing is made difficult by physical disruptions. Recent shifts in the nature of conflicts from field battles to urban warfare mean that sensors need to be more numerous. Otherwise, the minimum level of situation awareness (SA) required typically by forces on the ground, will be very hard to achieve.

Finally, mission flexibility is a need in many operational environments. One of the ways to increase flexibility in the UAV context is by carrying multiple payloads or having multi-role remote sensors. Having a higher payload-to-air vehicle ratio as well as the need for multi-role, remote sensors will drive the revenues in this market up.

Currently, there are only a handful of UAV remote sensing players with extensive operational experience.

Raytheon Airborne Systems, US-based yet having a global presence, currently supplies the remote sensors on board Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk high-altitude long endurance (HALE) UAV. Thales Optronics/ Sensors is a prime European contractor for UAV remote sensors. With recent bid success for UK’s MoD’s Watchkeeper Thales has potentially strengthened its foothold in this market. Israeli Aircraft Industries’ (IAI) TAMAM is arguably one of the most experienced players in this market. TAMAM payloads are not only installed on IAI’ UAVs but also on those of competitors such as Elbit’s Hermes 450 or AAI’s Shadow 200. L-3, with its EO systems on board many U.S. UAVs such as the Pioneer, Predator, and I-Gnat, is gradually bettering its already impressive position in the market.

Other UAV remote sensor manufacturers, such as ELOP, ELTA, FLIR systems, ITT Night-Vision, Sagem, Recon/Optics Inc., BAE Systems and others are all worthy competitors that are expected to win business opportunities in this highly competitive market.

The future of the UAV mission remote-sensing market is likely to lie in three key mission areas: Persistence surveillance, target identification and weapons deployment. Visual, Electro-optic and RADAR remote sensors deal with the needs of all three of these areas.

To meet the needs in these areas, UAV remote sensors should aim to be all in one, commercial off the shelf (COTS), integrated systems. UAV remote sensor manufacturers should no longer aim to produce "stand-alone" sensors, but rather "integrated sensor" systems that aim to link high-resolution visual, EO and RADAR together. Commanders will then be able to select from the visual, EO/IR and RADAR imagery modes, or an overlaid combination of them – a capability not available from stand-alone sensors on most current UAVs.

Current and future developers must strive to provide these enhanced capability systems at affordable prices. Furthermore, the overwhelming need to reduce "sense-to-shoot" times is expected to boost the development of these remote-sensing systems into "plug & play", modular packages capable of identifying and automatically cueing time sensitive targets (TST). Systems offering improved inter-operability and net-centricity, as well as flexibility are likely to have the best market performance.

A market that is still relatively unknown to UAV remote sensor players is that of the Mini UAV (MUAV). With the world’s smallest MUAV, the "Black Widow" from AeroVironment, having a wing span of just 20cm, this puts a whole new perspective on the remote sensing markets. It’s 30-minute endurance and real-time camera uplink means that soldiers can literally throw this UAV into a building or over a wall for reconnaissance purposes. This new category of UAV has opened up a whole new market for the future, with micro cameras and EO systems starting to make appearances in preparation for this market to take-off.

Remote sensors are the backbone of all military airborne situational awareness and surveillance missions and their attributes are becoming more and more widely acknowledged. As a result, European UAV remote sensor manufacturers need to adjust their R&D to meet the evolving needs for superior performance at competitive prices.