• Existing capabilities and the future requirements to provide increased domain awareness
• Current methods of information sharing between allied nations
• Future application of UAVs

Brigadier General John Horner
Director of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Capabilities
Headquarters United States Air Force

• Purchasing of Predator B aircraft in support of UK ground forces
• Use and training with US troops to operate US-owned Predator aircraft alongside USAF squadrons
• Discussion of the attack capability of the Predator aircraft and how this brings add power to the battle field

Wing Commander Taylor
39 Squadron, Creech Air Force Base
Royal Air Force

• Can UAV surveillance and reconnaissance emerge as being as multifunctional as manned aircraft?
• What is current testing and evaluation revealing about future trends and current usages?
• After current theatre operations come to a close, can UAV s be adapted for the challenges of the future - be they future military operations or security measures - how can they operate in civilian airspace?

Brigadier General John Horner
Director of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Capabilities
Headquarters United States Air Force

Major General Blair Hansen
Deputy Commander, Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance; and Deputy Director of the Defence Intelligence A gency for Collection Management
United States Air Force

Group Captain Steve Thornber
Head of JARIC
Royal Air Force

• MALE platform requirements - overview of the currently agree on joint requirements
• Operational capability ambitions to be delivered by 2015
• Overview of French ISR Capability

Romain Bethoux
Director for UAV Capability
French Air Force

• What do top industry leaders see as the final frontier for the UAV ?
• What do UAV manufactures and systems integrators see as the key areas for future investment in R&D?
• What will be the main characteristics of future conflicts and what key threats are the industry keeping front of mind?

Invited: General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Selex Galileo, Elbit, EADS, Cassidian, BAE, Dassault, N orthrop Grumman

• Integration of the Euro Hawk with existing ISR assets
• Euro Hawk as an interoperable, modular and cost-effective replacement to the fleet of manned Breguet Atlantic aircraft
• Overview of the future role of the UAV for operations in theatre

Lieutenant Colonel Eberhard Knoelker
Assistant Branch Chief and Service Manger UAV
German Air Force

• Overview of the Israeli Air Force ISR Platforms
• The role of the UAV within the entire capability
• Platform integration - successfully linking all ISR assets to provide total domain awareness

Head of UAV Programmes
Israeli Air Force (pending final conformation)

Led By:

Professor Antonios Tsourdos
Head of the Centre for Autonomous Systems at
Cranfield University, Defence Academy of the UK

Professor Rafał Żbikowski
Professor of Control Engineering at Cranfield University
Defence Academy of the UK

PART 1 GUARANTEED BEHAVIOUR OF AUTONOMOUS CO-OPERATING UAVS IN ISR MISSIONS

Multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (MUAV s) can provide significant reductions in manpower and risk to humans for ISR, including: enhancement of ISR coverage; increase in the mission success rate; increase of autonomy; robustness and benign degradation in performance. A key issue which must be addressed in order for the potential benefits to be realised is guaranteed performance of the dynamic behaviour of MUAV s. In this part we shall focus on coordinating of MUAV s in a predictable and verifiable way, including preservation of communication network integrity.

PART 2 BIO-INSPIRED SENSING FOR AUTONOMOUS OPERATION OF SENSOR PLATFORMS

A key enabler for realisation of the battlefield potential of autonomous vehicles is endowing them with affordable sensing. This entails not only low-cost hardware, but also sparing use of the communication datalink, contrary to the current practice of realtime streaming of video and other high-bandwidth sensor data for human-intensive, ground-based, off-line analysis. Bio-inspired approach to this problem leads to content-activated sensing, which means information extraction only in reaction to appearance of the relevant information in the data. Operating in GSP-denied environment is naturally addressed by this framework. In this part we shall focus on content-activated sensing, which can dramatically reduce the cost and time of sensor processing, datalink utilisation and also reduces human workload for the ground operator/analyst.

Benefits of attending include:

• Access to the most update technology research that will define the future of the UAV market
• How UAV s can operate in adverse environments where they previously would be unable to function
• A discussion on achieving a reduced operating personnel without impacting the intelligence gathered
• A chieving a reduction in both cost and time of sensor processing

Led By:

Matt Roper
Group Head & Programme Manager, Joint Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance
NATO C3 Agency

PART 1 ACHIEVING COMPLETE ASSET INTERGRATION

When aiming to enhance ISTA R capability the entire mix of assets present in the fleet must be considered, not individually but as a team. For maximum output all assets must not only be fully integrated but also working in equilibrium with one another. When expanding the picture even further, if you are operating in battle space with allied forces you would aim not only for your assets to operate jointly but for the entire allied capability to be integrated and functioning as an all-inclusive unit to promote optimal performance and battle space awareness

PART 2 INFORMATION SHARING TO PROVIDE TOTAL DOMAIN AWARENESS

As well aim to fully integrate all assets there is a need to ensure that all information is shared between assets and allied nations as a pose to each working with as an individual project. Creating a central information “bank” to which all intelligence can be sent and subsequently be accessed by allies would be one way of address this issues. Interoperability must also be addressed especially between considering different nations protocols and the problems still encountered. Discussion to examine the possibilities to overcome intelligence sharing both between platforms of an individual nation and between allied forces will be the way forward.

THIS WORKSHOP WILL ADDRESS:

• Blending of airborne assets ensure the maximum output is achieved from the mix of assets that are currently operating
• Sharing and exchange of multiple providers
• Network Architecture options available and the benefits that each will bring
• Managing multi function platforms and the inelegance that they generate