Special Report: Aviation: Drone Sales Flourish in a Time of Austerity

The use of unmanned drones for surveillance and targeted anti-guerrilla strikes has recently been a focus of ethical and political controversy.

Yet for all the criticism, and at a time when austerity budgets are causing deep cuts in orders for manned combat, transport and tanker aircraft, drone builders are thriving.

For defense planners and military strategists, the multiple mission capabilities of drones, their sophisticated technologies and their suitability for unconventional warfare gives them a clear edge over manned aircraft programs, which increasingly look like a holdover from Cold War planning.

Ranging in size from hand-launched reconnaissance units for urban combat to giant experimental solar-powered surveillance craft intended to remain aloft for as long as five years, drones, formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or U.A.V.’s, are not cheap, but they are increasingly ubiquitous.

David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency adviser who worked with Gen. David Petraeus of the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, said 70 nations were already involved with drones in some fashion.

Michael Richter, head of aerospace and defense investment banking for the investment bank Lazard, in Los Angeles, said the U.S. budget sequestration law would cut U.S. defense spending to $551 billion next year from $587 billion this year, with a further fall in prospect to $505 billion in 2015 and 2016.

Still, cybersecurity and drone programs are likely to be relatively resistant to cuts because of their perceived critical importance, he said.

U.S. drones already in operational use include the hand-launched AeroVironment RQ-11 Raven, effectively a flying camera that provides support for troops in close combat, and the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, which can be programmed to operate almost autonomously, without a land-based controller. The Global Hawk can take off from California, fly across the United States to map the state of Maine, and then return to California.

More familiar to the public because of high-profile strikes against Al Qaeda and other targets are General Atomics’ MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper.

Development programs include the Northrop Grumman X-47B, an experimental carrier-based combat drone. The program took a step forward recently with a catapult launching from the U.S. aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush, following successful on-shore tests of landings using arresting wires.

Micah Zenko, a fellow at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, said he expected that armed drones would be capable of carrying out carrier-based missions five years from now.

Another high-technology venture is Boeing’s Solar Eagle research program, slated to start testing next year and intended to develop an aircraft that could stay airborne for up to five years.

Philip Finnegan, director of corporate analysis at Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm based in Fairfax, Virginia, said he expected the 2014 U.S. budget to propose reductions in existing drone programs in favor of “next generation systems, stealthier, with more power, and capable of operating autonomously if jammed by opponents.”

Among major competitors to the U.S. drone makers, Mr. Finnegan lists Israeli companies — in some cases working with Indian partners — and Brazilian programs aimed at that country’s need to patrol far-flung jungle borders and a long Atlantic coastline.

Also emerging as future competitors, in Mr. Finnegan’s view, are Turkish Aerospace Industries; Denel, the South African state-owned aerospace and defense technology group; and some Chinese companies.

In the more traditional field of piloted military aircraft, some new players are aiming at niche segments with substantial long-term potential. A case in point is Embraer, of Brazil, which is adding both conventional military and unmanned flight capabilities to its core commercial aviation business. On the conventional military front, its KC-390 twin-jet tactical airlift and tanker plane is scheduled to make its first flight by the end of 2014, with entry into service planned for 2016.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/business/global/drone-sales-flourish-in-a-time-of-austerity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss