Enabling Technologies for Small Unmanned Aerial System Engagement of Moving Urban Targets

The DoD has a mission need to engage moving targets in an urban setting in clear and adverse weather conditions. To address this mission need and overcome the limitations associated with conventional airborne targeting and weapon platforms, APL embarked on an independent research and development (IR&D) effort to weaponize a small unmanned aerial system (UAS) that is capable of cooperating with currently fielded small UASs to execute the entire kill chain (find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess). The main objectives of the IR&D effort were to plan a mission using a UAS simulation environment, demonstrate the enabling technologies that would allow a group of cooperating small UASs to execute the entire kill chain in a complex aerodynamic environment, and demonstrate the lethality of a small UAS-compatible warhead. The accomplishment of these IR&D objectives led to a successful demonstration of the cooperative hunter/killer UAS concept performing convoy protection at the Joint Expeditionary Forces Experiment 2010 (JEFX 10) at the Nevada Test and Training Range.