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An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft that flies without a human crew on board the aircraft. Their largest uses are in military applications. To distinguish UAVs from missiles, a UAV is defined as a reusable, uncrewed vehicle capable of controlled, sustained, level flight and powered by a jet or reciprocating engine. Therefore, cruise missiles  are not considered UAVs, because, like many other guided missiles, the vehicle itself is a weapon that is not reused, even though it is also unmanned and in some cases remotely guided.

The earliest unmanned aerial vehicle was A. M. Low's "Aerial Target" of 1916. A number of remote-controlled airplane advances followed, including the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane, during and after World War I, including the first scale RPV (Remote Piloted Vehicle), developed by the film star and model airplane enthusiast Reginald Denny in 1935.

Find out more about Unmanned Aircraft from reading through the articles we have compiled on the subject.

I.  Unmanned Aircraft Business

II. Boeing Gts $89M to Bild Umanned Aircraft (by Michael Cooney)

III. Boeing Creates UAV Business Division (by Karen Walker)

IV. Cyprus Rsearchers Rveal Sape-Sifting Arcraft

V. Boeing, Lockheed Martin take Dfferent Tcks on UAV business (by Karen Walker)

I.  Unmanned Aircraft Business

Today, at least 32 countries are developing a total of more than 250 models of UAV, and 41 countries already operate 80 types. Most of these are reconnaissance craft, but pilotless aircraft  will also be the combat vehicles of the future. As the leading frontier in aviation research, the military's ideas and development on UAVs will be influential in the rest of aviation.

As UAVs have proved themselves in various theatres of war, military interest has blossomed. In the past two years, American spending on them has gone from $300m-400m a year to over $1 billion, according to Laurence Newcome, who runs the website "UAV Forum". America's Department of Defence expects to spend $16 billion on UAVs between 2002 and 2010. According to a UAV road map from America's Department of Defence, by 2012 UAVs the size of F-16 fighter aircraft are likely to exist. These will be capable of many combat and support missions, including the suppression of enemy air defences and electronic attacks on enemy sensors. The ultimate goal is to enable America to project its power on to the far side of the globe with no need for nearby air bases, or risk to the lives of pilots.

By 2020, the Pentagon estimates that one-third of America's combat planes will be robotic. UAVs certainly look as though they will be commanding a large share of future military spending. And the Joint Strike Fighter being built by Lockheed Martin looks as though it will be the last new manned American fighter for decades. By 2100, human military pilots will be a quaint oddity. Why? Even if pilots could be beefed up with an exoskeleton that would allow their bodies to turn under a force 20 times that of the Earth's gravity, they think and react more slowly than computers.---Article was inspired by tjacobi.com.

II. Boeing Gts $89M to Bild Umanned Aircraft (by Michael Cooney)

One of the more unique unmanned aircraft took a giant step toward reality when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) inked an agreement with Boeing to build the SolarEagle, a plane capable of remaining at heights over 60,000ft for over five years.

Boeing says the first SolarEagle under the $89 million contract could fly as early as 2014.

12 mad science projects that could shake the world

The SolarEagle is built under DARPA's Vulture program.  The idea is to build a single aircraft that could support traditional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance functions over country-sized areas - while at the same time providing an unblinking eye over a critical target, monitoring that target night and day, day in and day out, month after month - providing unprecedented high-value intelligence. Vulture aircraft will also be able to provide communications capabilities available today only from geostationary satellites - offering opportunities for new, more flexible, expandable and relocatable communication architectures at a fraction of the cost of dedicated satellite capabilities. The challenges with Vulture include developing solar cell, energy storage, and reliability technologies that will allow the aircraft to operate continuously, unrefueled for over 44,000 hours, DARPA stated.

Under the Vulture II agreement, Boeing will develop a full-scale flight demonstrator, including maturation of the critical power system and structures technologies. Key suppliers for the program include Versa Power Systems and QinetiQ.

During testing, the SolarEagle demonstrator will remain in the upper atmosphere for 30 days, harvesting solar energy during the day that will be stored in fuel cells and used to provide power through the night. The aircraft will have highly efficient electric motors and propellers and a high-aspect-ratio, 400-foot wing for increased solar power and aerodynamic performance, Boeing stated.

Boeing has been on a roll this week.  Earlier it had announced a marriage with outer space tourism proprietors Space Adventures to offer low Earth orbit (LEO) flight services onboard Boeing's future commercial crew spacecraft.  Under the agreement, Space Adventures will market passenger seats on commercial flights aboard the Boeing Crew Space Transportation-100 (CST-100) spacecraft.

Boeing's (CST)-100, which is under development, can hold seven and is bigger than NASA's Apollo orbiter but smaller than NASA's Orion.  Boeing says the ship will be able to launch on a variety of different rockets, including Atlas, Delta and Falcon. It will use simple systems architecture and existing, proven components, Boeing stated.---Article was inspired by networkworld.com.

III. Boeing Creates UAV Business Division (by Karen Walker)

PARIS - Boeing today stood up a new unmanned aerial vehicle division that will consolidate its unmanned system activities under a single unit headquartered in Seattle.

Boeing Integrated Defense Systems president and CEO Jim Albaugh announced the new division today at the Paris Air Show.

The company expects the global unmanned market to be worth $60 billion to $100 billion over the next 10 years, according to Boeing vice president of business development Chris Raymond. Boeing's annual revenue from unmanned business is now around $400 million, Raymond said.

"We believe we can grow [our business] at a good double-digit compound rate," he said.

Boeing's unmanned systems include the ScanEagle and the larger, newer Integrator UAVs, both developed by Insitu, a small company acquired by Boeing. The company also has the A160 Hummingbird unmanned rotary-wing vehicle, is doing development work on the High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) program, and recently announced that is it developing the Phantom Ray UAV.

Albaugh said today that the company plans to do the first flight of a Phantom Ray prototype late this year or early in 2010, and that the development program was focused on a U.S. customer.

Albaugh said the new division would focus as strongly on ground-based control and operator systems as it would on unmanned vehicles. "We have developed a lot of unmanned vehicle ground stations. We think that the capability to operate multiple unmanned vehicles from a single operator is a powerful capability," Albaugh said.

The new UAV division is part of Boeing's larger military growth strategy that includes targeting and shaping emerging markets within the irregular warfare and C4ISR sectors, Albaugh said.

"On April 6, the [U.S.] defense secretary made [2010 defense budget] announcements about programs and there were impacts for us there, but also great opportunities for us," Albaugh said. Among the big opportunities is the new greater focus on irregular warfare and C4ISR systems.---Article was inspired by defensenews.com.

IV. Cyprus Rsearchers Rveal Sape-Sifting Arcraft

Researchers in Cyprus have developed an unmanned aircraft able to withstand severe weather conditions by changing shape, filling a safety void in rescue operations frequently hampered by extreme weather.

The project, currently under development on the east Mediterranean island, aims to build a small, affordable unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which can be deployed with minimal risk to remote locations, guided from the ground.

"In severe weather this UAV can stay airborne whereas many other UAVs cannot," said Dr Michael Amprikidis, co-ordinator of the project developed by Cyprus's GG Dedalos Technologies and the Israel Computational Fluid Dynamics Center, their Israeli partner.

Partly funded by the European Union, his team of four have developed a small, portable UAV which can change shape depending on weather gusts.

The amphibious aircraft, which can be deployed for search and rescue, forest fire monitoring and border control, is expected to be commercially available in 2011. It can adjust its shape according to wind gusts, with an advanced version of the prototype also allowing for its wings to morph, or twist, based on flight phase and weather patterns.

Amprikidis, an aerospace engineer, says the UAV, known as an ASARP (Airborne Search and Rescue Platform), deploys aeroservoelastic trim tabs on its wings which vibrate at certain frequencies to counteract the impact of wind gusts.

"All of this happens automatically," Amprikidis told Reuters in an interview.

"There is a PID controller on board the aircraft which takes readings from the sensors which pick up the vertical motion in real time and return the signal straight back to the trim tabs for the ailerons to correct the motions of the aircraft," he said, referring to flaps on the trailing edge of a wing.

At the moment, the twin-cylinder engine ASARP can feed back images to a control center on the ground within a range of 4.5 miles. Should it move beyond that point, it automatically resumes its collated data feed once back within range, Amprikidis said.

Amprikidis says there has already been interest in the project from the Cypriot government.

The aircraft, which can be transported in boxes and assembled in 30 minutes, has a wingspan of 5 meters (yards), a fuselage length of around 4 meters, and a full payload of 70-75 kg (154-165 lb) with fuel. Amprikidis said it was affordable -- most of its avionics were created in-house using commercially available equipment.

The ASARP prototype has already been successfully tested in Cyprus in wind gust conditions of 65 km (40 miles).

"It was very stable indeed. It was able to remain airborne and still have a steady course," Amprikidis said.

The team is now applying other research ideas to the prototype, including morphing wings, which would make the response of the aircraft in heavy weather conditions even more efficient.

"We hope it would be commercially available during 2011," Amprikidis said.

The ASARP would not alleviate all potential threats to flying in bad weather, but does remove the risk to some crews working in such conditions, he said.---Article was inspired by msnbc.msn.com.

V. Boeing, Lockheed Martin take Dfferent Tcks on UAV business (by Karen Walker)

The rapidly expanding UAV market combined with growing awareness that the future global manned fighter market is likely to be dominated by one aircraft - the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter - is prompting different business strategies by rival U.S. giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Boeing has stood up a new UAV division that will consolidate its unmanned system activities under a single unit headquartered in Seattle. Boeing Integrated Defense Systems president and CEO Jim Albaugh announced the new division at the Paris Air Show in June.

35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin has made clear that for the time being, it sees no need to make a similar move. Company chairman, president and chief executive Robert Stevens said his company was comfortable with its position in the unmanned vehicle market. "We have an interest in unmanned platforms. We think we're very good at it. We've got a good portfolio of capabilities," Stevens said at a company event on the eve of the Paris Air Show.

The different business tacks come against a background in which bullishness for JSF global sales prospects could spur fierce campaign efforts by rivals pitching existing advanced fighter aircraft such as Boeing - with its F/A-18 and a new, so-called Silent Eagle, version of the F-15 - and Saab, with its Gripen.

Boeing insists it is not in direct competition with the F-35, saying that the F-15 is being marketed only to existing F-15 customers. In a statement, however, Boeing Military Aircraft President Chris Chadwick added, "If there are other customers who would like to talk to us about the enhanced version of the F-15 [Silent Eagle], we'd be happy to discuss."

During a JSF briefing at Paris, JSF program executive officer Maj. Gen. David Heinz said that the total global market for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter easily could reach 6,000 aircraft as countries look to replace their aging fighter fleets.

Lockheed Martin F-35 Executive Vice President Tom Burbage tempered that view, saying the potential for sales beyond those to the nine partner nations was "quite likely to be 1,000 or more."

Whatever the numbers, F-35 sales campaigns are now targeting countries as far afield as Finland, Israel, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Spain beyond the nine partner JSF nations of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S.

If the F-35 becomes the de facto global fighter of the future, then the world unmanned market, which Boeing Vice President of Business Development Chris Raymond said could be worth $60 billion to $100 billion over the next 10 years, looks like an attractive alternative.

Boeing's annual revenue from unmanned business is about $400 million, Raymond said. "We believe we can grow [our business] at a good double-digit compound rate, he said."

Boeing's unmanned systems include the ScanEagle and the larger, newer Integrator UAVs, both developed by Insitu, a small company acquired by Boeing. The company also has the A160 Hummingbird unmanned rotary-wing vehicle, is doing development work on the High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) program, and recently announced that is it developing the Phantom Ray UAV, a prototype for which is expected to fly this year or early in 2010.

Albaugh said the new division would focus as strongly on ground-based control and operator systems as it would on unmanned vehicles. "We have developed a lot of unmanned vehicle ground stations. We think that the capability to operate multiple unmanned vehicles from a single operator is a powerful capability," Albaugh said.

The new UAV division is part of Boeing's larger military growth strategy that includes targeting and shaping emerging markets within the irregular warfare and C4ISR sectors, Albaugh said.

"On April 6, the [U.S.] defense secretary made [2010 defense budget] announcements about programs and there were impacts for us there, but also great opportunities for us," Albaugh said. Among the big opportunities is the new greater focus on irregular warfare and C4ISR systems.

But Stevens said Lockheed is satisfied with its position in that market.

"We're comfortable with where we are on the product portfolios we have. We have the appropriate amount of emphasis on unpiloted vehicles in all the domains. We have never hesitated to make investments where investments are necessary," Stevens said. "I like our position in the competitive marketplace."---Article was inspired by allbusiness.com.