Logistics Aloft

Since the beginning of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, Department of Defense investment in unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has exploded almost 700% to just under $4 billion per year in 2009. This expansion was caused by the successful application of UASs primarily in their role as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, but also as ISR/strike platforms because these particular mission sets fit the capabilities of UASs. Going forward with these successes, the Department of Defense (DoD) should assess potential future UAS missions by first determining what particular characteristics of the ISR and ISR/strike missions made them successful as UAS missions and then determining what other missions fit these same characteristics. Emergency and mission-critical, time-sensitive (MCTS), intra-theater logistical resupply fit the characteristics of being advantageous to persistent, efficient, modular systems integrated into a pervasive battle space. Work is currently underway developing UASs to accomplish these missions, but these current applications do not focus on these specific characteristics. Instead a UAS designed specifically as a logistical delivery platform with modular ISR/strike capabilities and long endurance should be developed to fill these missions.