Contested Environments: Drone Demands For The Modern Battlefield

Amir Emadi co-founded Soaring, a Caltech spinoff enabling a more efficient way to move things with intelligent logistics drones.

The recent surge of activity from the Defense Innovation Unit reveals the Pentagon’s determination to accelerate the acquisition of drone technology. Today, the focus lies in deploying agile, high-performance drones tailored for contested environments. However, bridging the gap between innovation and battlefield needs remains a persistent challenge.

The DoD’s RDR and Replicator initiatives aim to streamline acquisition. The Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER—pronounced “raider”) encourages high-risk, high-reward experimentation, while Replicator focuses on rapidly scaling up proven technologies. This will undoubtedly create an industry of new types of drones, but each faces unique obstacles demanding precision solutions.

Short-Haul, Heavy-Lift Drones: Power, Heat, Energy

In early 2023, the U.S. Marine Corps assembled a budget to demonstrate Tactical Resupply Unmanned Aircraft Systems (TRUAS) in an attempt to grow the technology base while refining the requirement for cargo logistics drones that carry several hundreds of pounds in payload.

Ensuring the efficient operation of these massive platforms requires overcoming significant hurdles in power electronics and thermal management. Optimizing power conversion systems for both efficiency and weight becomes crucial, while advanced cooling techniques are essential for managing the immense heat generated.

Scaling up requires beefier motors, demanding higher currents and voltages. This necessitates robust power conversion systems, including inverters and controllers. As power scales, so does heat. Larger motors and electronics generate significant thermal loads. Failure to manage this heat effectively can lead to catastrophic consequences—think fried circuits and plummeting drones. The trick is to design efficient, compact systems that can handle the surge of power without succumbing to heat or instability.

Ultra-Long Range ISR (Winged) Drones: Lift Vs. Drag

The Air Force’s Medium Altitude, Long Endurance (MALE) program comprises platforms like Aurora Flight Systems’s Orion and the General Atomics’ MQ-1B Predator for both ISR and attack missions. Now there’s demand for simpler commercial drones with similar range but more precise loitering. The expectation is for these drones to be easier to deploy without much infrastructure but with more autonomy and at a cheaper price. However, demand for this new breed of drone forces scientists to make trade-offs.

Maximizing lift-to-drag ratio L/D is paramount, as it translates to longer loiter times and wider operational ranges. Longer wings boast higher L/D but compromise agility. More fuel translates to a longer range but increases weight-limiting payload capacity. It’s possible to create the right capabilities by continuing to push the boundaries of aerodynamics (e.g., dynamically adjusting wing shapes), materials science (e.g., creating lighter, stronger structures) and energy technologies (e.g., creating high-density, fast-charging batteries or hybrid systems).

Slow-Loiter, High-SWaP Drones: Dead Reckoning

According to the Army’s Program Executive Office of Aviation, in 2020, its Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (FTUAS) will replace the RQ-7B Shadow, which provides hundreds of kilometers of aerial reconnaissance to “ground maneuver brigade combat teams.” There’s an expanded need, however, for a high Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) drone platform to support Electronic Warfare (EW) payloads and Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) missions.

The comforting blanket of GPS/GNSS signals can be ripped away in environments where jamming or spoofing renders these systems useless. This is where the art of dead reckoning requires a drone to rely on internal sensors—including accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers—to estimate its position and movement. However, these sensors drift with time, making sensor fusion and advanced algorithms crucial for maintaining accuracy. But under Electromagnetic Emission Control (EMCON), every radio signal emits the drone’s location, necessitating low-power, stealthy communication techniques, such as spread spectrum and frequency hopping.

High-Altitude Drones: Comms, Sensing And Imaging

The U.S. Air Force uses Northrop Grumman’s remotely piloted RQ-4 GlobalHawk for a variety of high-altitude, long-endurance missions, including sensing, imaging and intelligence gathering. At high altitudes, the air thins, scattering light and degrading the performance of traditional sensors. In these conditions especially, drones experience communication loss of link (or “loss link”).

There’s a combination of visual/sensor fidelity, communication challenges and the unique flight conditions encountered at high altitudes. Adaptive optics and specialized lens coatings can compensate for atmospheric distortion and ensure high-quality imagery. Besides lenses, hyperspectral and multispectral imaging can be used to capture a wider range of the electromagnetic spectrum beyond the visible light, revealing hidden details invisible to the naked eye. Employing active sensing technologies such as Radar and LiDAR can help penetrate clouds and fog, providing all-weather imaging capabilities.

To be clear, these challenges aren’t unique to high-altitude drones. All devices in the sky will experience issues with communications, sensing and imaging. At lower altitudes, these issues might be exacerbated in different ways inside contested environments.

Beyond Technology: Navigating The Ecosystem

Replicator’s push for large-scale, domestic drone manufacturing adds another layer of complexity. It isn’t a small undertaking for Americans to bring the manufacturing infrastructure of electronic technology back home. Ensuring safety and responsible use necessitates adhering to stringent regulations in production and flight, encompassing everything from airspace utilization to payload restrictions. Even with the military, a drone company must pass an airworthiness inspection to verify, among many things, if components are compliant with the National Defense Authorization Act. Safeguarding national interests necessitates strict import/export controls, preventing unauthorized access to sensitive technologies.

The Pentagon’s drive, coupled with startup ingenuity, is a powerful force in the drone arms race. Overcoming the technical hurdles for specific drone classes, while navigating this complex ecosystem, will determine success. The collaboration between the DoD and tech innovators will shape the future of warfare and national security.

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