Methodologies For Analyzing Remotely Piloted Aircraft In Future Roles And Missions

The U.S. Air Force's remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) have played a significant role in current operations in Southwest Asia. As the inventory of RPAs increases and new sensor technologies come online in the coming years, the Air Force has an opportunity to consider additional roles for these aircraft. Thoughtful study into these possibilities will ensure that, when the Air Force employs RPAs, they will help fill capability gaps or augment existing capabilities in moreefficient or more-effective ways. The purpose of this documented briefing is to describe a suite of tools developed by RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) to help the Air Force think through future roles for RPAs. It describes tools to evaluate platform selection and concept of operations (CONOPS) development, sensor performance against various targets, weapon effects, environmental factors, platform survivability, computational processing of data, and exploitation of sensor products. This document also explains how the separate analysis in each of these areas feeds into a mission level analysis, performed with PAF's Systems and CONOPS Operational Effectiveness Model (SCOPEM), and a campaign-level analysis using PAF's Force Structure Effectiveness (FSE) model. Use of these tools and models will help clarify how future RPAs can contribute to U.S. warfighting in cost-effective ways. The tools presented here are also useful for examining the effectiveness of new capabilities more broadly (e.g., directed energy weapons or electronic warfare capabilities); examining the effectiveness of new platforms in the context of the entire intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) force posture; and evaluating the most cost-effective ISR force structure to meet future operational needs.