Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Contributions to Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Missions for Expeditionary Operations

This study analyzes the impact of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capabilities on intelligence gathering missions for a Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) commander in 2015. The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL) is developing requirements for an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) UAV that supports rapid planning and decision making for multiple concurrent operations and facilitates maneuver and precision engagement. The acquisition of a 2008 Pioneer replacement also is underway at Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM). However, the importance of various capabilities for this replacement UAV presently lacks quantitative analysis. Through modeling, agent-based simulation, and data mining, this study explores the validity of current requirements and provides insights into the importance of various UAV characteristics, such as airspeed, endurance, sweep width, and sensor capability. Each year, the Navy/Marine Corps conducts Fleet Battle Experiment Sea Viking in Southern California. The primary objective is Command and Control and ISR development. This study looks at UAV operations in the Sea Viking scenario provided by MCWL in the MANA agent-based modeling environment utilizing robust design, Latin hypercubes, data farming techniques, the Maui High Performance Computing Center, and the JMP Statistical Discovery Software package. The Sea Viking Experiment, the Marine Corps' largest annual experiment, provides a credible scenario for model development. The advantages of tactical routing, a 7 hour (or greater) on-station time, a minimum 4,500 meter sweep width, and a probability of classification of at least 0.4 are verified for the Sea Viking scenario. This analysis indicates that a UAV in this scenario does not need to travel in excess of 200 knots. The results have design consequences for MCWL's Sea Viking 20XX and provide key parameters for physics-based simulations such as COMBAT XXI. A 15-item bibliography is included. (26 figures, 26 refs7
The original document contains color images.