Dassault Launches UCAV Initiative

Asian Aerospace 2000 -- Addressing the Millennium Airpower Conference on his last public engagement before stepping down from his present position at Dassault Aviation, Serge Dassault provided a few glimpses into the future of his company. Specifically, he outlined Dassault's ongoing development work into UCAVs (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles).

Dassault said that modern air warfare has entered the realm of information warfare, with traditional warfighting concepts being left behind. He also noted that few nations have the resources required to support this information warfare infrastructure-such as satellites, AWACS and JSTARS, UAVs and advanced combat aircraft and the associated C3 structure. Serge Dassault reflected that Rafale could act as a force enabler to fight such a future war by serving as a UCAV flight leader, increasing the combat power of an air force, while giving it flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Using Rafale in this way would be an advanced and affordable way to conduct future air operations.

Dassault has identified four key missions for its Rafale/UCAV mix: SEAD, armed reconnaissance, offensive strike and tactical air-to-surface maritime operations. Within the Rafale aircraft there are already four key technologies that allow it to serve the UCAV concept: a dedicated on-board datalink for UCAV control, large onboard computer processing capacity, an evolved man-machine interface and extended data fusion processes.

Rafale's datalink would allow it to operate real-time video uplink from the UCAV; and Dassault is already exploring on-board satellite communications. Rafale has a multi-sensor suite to provide robust data fusion and situational awareness. The challenge for UCAV operations will be to fuse all the data coming from tactical and operative loops, in real-time. Though the effort involved in actually achieving this is considerable, Dassault predicts that Rafale will evolve into an effective UCAV flight leader in the foreseeable future. Indeed as Serge Dassault joked, Rafale could now be seen as the true JSF-or 'Jolly Superior Fighter,' as he put it.

By Robert Hewson