New unmanned aircraft tested at Dugway

DUGWAY — The U.S. Army's unmanned aircraft effort officially stepped out of its infancy Wednesday with the opening of a new center that will pool resources and brainpower.

The Unmanned Aircraft Systems Project Office Rapid Integration and Acceptance Center's mission is to develop more, better, faster deployments of the remotely controlled surveillance and communication relay vehicles. Both Army brass and ground troops say the aircraft are the best thing next to their gun and helmet to have on the battlefield.

"These aircraft not only multiply battlefield intelligence and communication; they reduce the risk to our war fighters, both by saving labor and time of physically surveying an area by spotting enemy activity and hazards over the next horizon or around a corner of a building they could well miss without them," Scott Newbern, a production line manager who works with the dozens of companies that design and build the vehicles.

"Yes, there are a lot of next horizons in the areas where U.S. troops are now deployed," Newbern said, adding that unmanned aircraft systems are proving themselves in the field. The Raven, the smallest of the bunch at 4.2 pounds, is an "organic asset" of the smaller ground units that can be used in all kinds of situations and conditions by commanders to detect, identify and track hostile activity. It can also identify friendly forces and thereby help reduce unintended casualties.

The Dugway center, which is open to any military agency that needs unmanned equipment quickly tested and fielded, has a three-fold mission — to test and get the most up-to-date aircraft into the field as fast as possible and to provide the Army, the Department of Defense, industry and academia a world-class facility for research, design and operator training.

Aircraft tested at the center range from those with 55-foot wingspans that can operate as high as 25,000 feet and "dwell" literally all day over an area down to the Raven, which has a wingspan of 4.6 feet and can reach 4,000 feet. The Raven, which is currently being used by company commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, is launched by a soldier throwing it into the air.

New uses and possible new capacities for these aircraft literally come in every week, said Col. Greg Gonzalez, a Brigham Young University alum and project manager for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Project Office headquartered at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.

It's another reason this center was started, Gonzales said. It also suits the imperatives of the Army modernization efforts, and Dugway is an ideal site for it.