Global Hawk Becoming First Synth Fuel Certified UAV

Thanks to Wired's Danger Zone for this short note.  Our blog has pondered the energy demand dynamics of DOD's increasing love affair with drones many times (see here and here for example).

But this certainly adds a new twist. It's not a renewable source of course, and it sure ain't clean. But if we had to use it, having the ability to run on coal-derived JP8 is good insurance ... and mission assurance.

And while we're at it: Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families from your friends the DOD Energy Blog.

Photo credit: Thomasz Dunn on Flickr.com

Another Energy Implications Update from the Air Force UAV Files

I don't have numbers that describe drone fuel demand, but we can assume that being smaller, lighter and slower, they get many more MPG than F-15s, F-16s and A/F-18s. However, you also want to factor in the fact that a UAV typical sortie can be five times as long as a fighter sortie, so that may serve to balance things out a bit.

You'll have to sort through some of the variables in your head to imagine future fuel demand implications ... things like:

• how many concurrent, continuous global UAV sorties (40 is the number today)
• how big and heavy are some UAVs going to become
• at what speeds and altitudes will they fly
• will the DOD UAV inventory be counted in the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands ... or even higher
• will jet fuel remain the primary fuel source
• will new airframe efficiencies (like those described briefly in the previous post) bring a significant reduction in fuel demand per vehicle

This recent article in the Washington Post paints the UAV's future with a bit more resolution, even as it joins the chorus questioning the viability of the Air Force as an independent service. In this excerpt, the author is referencing some of the different UAV use cases and deployment configurations developed by Colonel Eric Mathewson, principal author of last years's "USAF Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan, 2009-2047":

The plan that Mathewson produced for the Air Force envisions unmanned planes not only providing surveillance and striking targets, but also hauling cargo around the world. Instead of flying just one plane, a single pilot would probably control as many as four or five planes simultaneously. "If I am doing a surveillance mission where the plane is literally just staring at the ground or at a road for eight or ten hours, I don't need a pilot actively controlling the plane," he said. "So maybe I have a squadron of 40 aircraft but I only have four or five people monitoring them." The Air Force and Mathewson have already demonstrated in training that one pilot can fly as many as four Predators.

There are a lot of organizational culture issues in the Post article, and how they play out may be as important in predicting the future as are the technology factors. With so many variables, it's still too early for me to imagine the energy demand consequences. But it's necessary (and a little fun) to think about it now.

Photo Credit: Zach Tumin on Flickr

UAV Anxiety: Losing Touch with Distant Drones

Thanks to Peter Reed and Stephan Tremble for this. You'll recall how I drone on about the fuel demand implications of a global sky filled with DOD UAVs 24/7/365. Boring, right? Well, bet you hadn't thought of this energy-related risk (below) ... I certainly didn't !!!

During "lost link" episodes, when communication with the air crew is broken, the plane circles on a preset course and waits for direction. "We have to find it. It's like hide-and-seek," Dowd said. The week Gersten took command at Creech, a power surge hit the base and he lost contact with several Predators and Reapers over Afghanistan and Iraq. His crews told him this was nothing to worry about, and in fifteen minutes all the planes were back online. Two weeks later, another power surge hit Creech and he lost contact with more Predators and Reapers. Within a half hour, all were found. But systems so technology-dependent will be vulnerable to exploitation, whether through hacking or physical interruption of data -- shooting down a satellite, perhaps, along its round-the-world journey. And in increasingly wired war zones, everyone will be fighting for bandwidth.

Read the full article in Esquire ... quite interesting indeed.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

UAV Revolution update

Fresh from a great lecture last night on exponential rates of improvement in information systems by futurist Ray Kurzweil, and only 2 days remove from a post on the revolution in the performance and use of UAVs, I get a note in my inbox this morning. It's a press release announcing a new small UAV endurance record leveraging a breakthrough in fuel cell technology. Navy's ONR is a partner. Draw your own conclusions about where this is leading.

Without further adieu, here you go:

SMALL UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE COMPLETES RECORD 23-HOUR FLIGHT
USING PROTONEX FUEL CELL SYSTEM

DATELINE: SOUTHBOROUGH, MA; Protonex Technology Corporation (LSE: AIM: PTX and PTXU), a leading provider of advanced fuel cell power systems, today announced that the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), through a program sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), has documented a flight endurance record on their small, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the Ion Tiger, utilizing a highly advanced fuel cell system from Protonex. The Ion Tiger UAV flew for over 23 hours, setting an unofficial endurance record for fuel cell powered flight, driven by the latest generation of Protonex' UAV power system. The 23+ hour duration of the Ion Tiger flight far surpasses the longest previous small UAV flight achieved using any technology. By incorporating the Protonex power system, the Ion Tiger was able to demonstrate seven times the endurance capability of advanced batteries. The Protonex UAV system that was used in the Ion Tiger demonstration is a high performance, ultralight proton exchange membrane [PEM] fuel cell system, coupling stack technology that can achieve 1,000 watts per kilogram with advanced balance of plant components. With the successful completion of this major milestone, Protonex is planning to continue transitioning this advanced power source into small UAV products with specific payloads and mission requirements for both military and commercial applications. The endurance capabilities proven in this program were previously achievable only with larger scale, more costly UAVs. Protonex is now confident that new critical missions can be achieved by smaller, more cost-effective UAV platforms that incorporate its advanced power systems. "This impressive 23-hour record flight milestone represents yet another successful collaboration with the NRL and is a culmination of all of our combined efforts to date," stated Dr. Paul Osenar, Chief Technology Officer, Protonex. "We share the ONR's vision towards bringing quiet electric propulsion and long endurance to today's small UAVs and to extend the capability to the warfighter."

The Economist and Tom Barnett on UAV Revolution

Nice piece in the Economist on past, present and likely future of UAVs or "drones". Pace of innovation and energy-related technological advance reminds me of the 1980's PC era:

Small drones ... with electric motors are quiet enough for low-altitude spying. But batteries and fuel cells have only recently become light enough to open up a large market. A fuel cell developed by AMI Adaptive Materials, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, exemplifies the progress made. Three years ago AMI sold a 25-watt fuel cell weighing two kilograms. Today its fuel cell is 25% lighter and provides eight times as much power. This won AMI a $500,000 prize from the Department of Defence. Its fuel cells, costing about $12,000 each, now propel small drones.

And here are Barnett's take-aways:

• No personnel lost and drones deliver great results at about 1/20th the cost of jets
• Benefit is the loitering capacity ("persistent stare" means yo can find needles in haystacks because you can watch them being built) yielding real-time operational intell
• In 2003, the big UAVs logged 35k hours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year the number was 800,000 hours. That total doesn't even include all the new, super-small robotic ones that guys just launch by throwing them in the air; the U.S. military has something like 5,000 such units. That's a revolution, my friends

And his prediction: "the big UAVs are getting up in the tens of millions of dollars per unit, but the smaller ones stay in the tens of thousands of dollars. Guess which ones will win out over time?"

For me, UAVs and their land-based and under-sea autonomous and semi-autonomous cousins have got to be one of the most exciting product families to work on in a long time. And the implications of their arrival and eventual ubiquity are, for DOD energy demand planners, presently unfathomable. Eyes wide open on this space.

Photo: Wikimedia

Future Aircraft Technology: Reviewed, Considered, Critiqued

Thanks to Ollie for pointing this one out. Personally, I'm less concerned about the aviation industry's ability to comply with emissions targets, and more interested in how evolving policy and technology will impact how the Air Force does its job. We've talked about blended wing body and other future concepts here before. This recent article in MIT's Technology Review reminds us of the incremental nature (and limitations) of many of the technologies now on the table.

With these limitations in mind, by 2020, new technologies could make aircraft about 20 percent to 35 percent more efficient, on average, than planes today. Fuselage coatings and adjustable wings, among other things, could reduce drag. Engines that run hotter and at higher pressures would use less fuel, as would engines that use gears to optimize the speeds of different parts of a turbine, and open-rotor designs that resemble and have some of the efficiency advantages of turboprops.

And they're not even beginning to address potentially massive new fuel burdens from ubiquitous and perpetual UAV deployments. We better hope there's a breakthrough in either Star Trek transporter technology or Harry Potter flue powder, because evolving-but-traditional jet planes simply aren't keeping up with the future.

Image: Gizmodo