Douglas Barrie, Giorgio Di Mizio, Fabian Hinz & Ester Sabatino
Uninhabited combat air systems have, in one guise or another, appeared on the brink of service entry for more than two decades, but to date they have never quite transitioned from a developmental to an operational capability. This may be about to change, along with considerations about the roles and the kinds of platforms to be pursued. This paper will use ‘uninhabited combat air system’ generically as a broad term, while ‘uninhabited combat air vehicle’ (UCAV) is used to reflect specific projects or national usage of the language.
The initial UCAV concepts of the late 1990s and early 2000s broadly resembled a crewed combat aircraft, minus the crew, and were envisaged to perform the same or similar roles. To some extent, this still holds true and the term ‘UCAV’ remains in circulation. But the UCAV idea more recently has also been broken down into capability families, such as the United States’ Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA); Australia’s and the United Kingdom’s Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP); and the planned French–German–Spanish remote carriers (RCs), which have also fulfilled envisaged UCAV roles for some countries. As these names suggest, these families are seen as operating in concert with, or in some cases being operated from, crewed combat aircraft in executing a mission or combat task.
Several US allies are also pushing to introduce uninhabited combat air systems into service around the end of this decade. This paper provides a snapshot of developments in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Turkiye and the UK as each country explores its needs and considers requirements.
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