Employment of Unmanned Aircraft Systems for Canadian Forces Anti-Submarine Warfare

<p>Fixed-wing Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) technology has experienced exponential growth over the past 10-15 years and is now employed as an intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) asset by virtually every modern military force in the world as well as by civil law enforcement agencies. Currently more than 30 nations are developing or manufacturing more than 250 models of UAS. Substantial commercial market growth and competition in fixed wing UAS platforms for military and law enforcement applications resulted in a wide variety of UAS platforms from small hand-launched aircraft that operate at low altitudes for short-duration to large complex turbo-prop and jet powered aircraft capable of long-endurance operations at medium and high altitudes. Employment of Medium-Altitude Long-Endurance (MALE) and High-Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) UAS in the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) role is rapidly becoming feasible through emerging technologies and expanded payload capacities the most significant of which are secure high-bandwidth Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) satellite datalink communications miniature light-weight sonobuoys and real-time shore-based acoustic processing. As a result UAS may be a technically feasible future Canadian Forces (CF) ASW capability as a complementary or stand-alone alternative to manned fixed-wing and rotary-wing maritime ASW platforms.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p><br>