Abstract:
Autonomous / semi- autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been in use for
decades e.g., target drones, cruise missiles, Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAVs etc.
UAVs have demonstrated their role and importance in wide range of applications.
Contemporary UAV employment concepts require multiple type of relatively inexpensive
autonomous/semi-autonomous UAVs in volley quantities to undertake multiple tasks
simultaneously. Air forces are increasingly counting on unmanned systems in contested
environments to counter the risk of threatening technologies. In order to execute critical
missions, forces require ability to send number of small UAV swarms with coordinated,
distributed capabilities. This will provide them with improved operational flexibility at much
lower cost as compared to expensive, manned platforms, particularly if they could be retrieved
for reuse. Another desire is to have technical commonality and scalability of UAVs which will
enable more efficient management of ground support equipment, training facilities etc.
Scalability also allow the UAVs to be more efficient and facile enabling their features to be
upgraded or down-sized as per mission requirements at much lower cost. It is inefficient to
field and operate a multitude of unrelated vehicles with uncommon hardware, software,
architecture. The thesis is the system level study of unmanned aerial vehicle that is air launched
and is recoverable to address these futuristic employment concepts of airpower. The study has
been conducted to explore desirable sub-systems and technological options that can be
integrated to form envisioned air-launched UAV. Moreover, analysis of major requirements
using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) has also been carried out to weigh their relative
importance and to find their priority eigen vector.
