The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 constitute the deadliest ever foreign assault on U.S. soil. The attacks have drawn attention to inadequacies in the nation's state of preparedness, its warning and response capabilities, and have brought renewed urgency to halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) carrying a wide range of communications electronics and sensor payloads can be utilized to provide: rapidly deployable emergency communications capabilities; arrays of sensors that can detect nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) agents; situational awareness information to military, civilian, homeland security, law enforcement, and "first responder" personnel; and forward-based reconnaissance, intelligence collection, and warfighting capabilities to military forces. This Phase I project will begin to develop critical technologies for a wide range of payloads that will be integrated into UAVs. In particular, Phase I will utilize the "System-of-Systems" approach to pursue communications systems payloads, active and passive electronic MASINT sensors, and sensors capable of detecting NBC agents. It will focus on integrating these payloads into the Future Combat Systems (FCS) Organic Air Vehicle (OAV). The OAV will be used as the "technology platform" to develop applications, products, components, and technologies that will ultimately fit into the OAV systems architecture. The anticipated benefits of this program will be the development and commercialization a wide range of technologies based upon the "Systems-of-Systems" concept. The overall system platform can be broken down into communications systems and sensor payloads, subsystems/modules, components, and technologies. Each of these areas will have applications and markets that are independent of the overall system platform. Additionally, each of the individual "parts" of the platform can become separate projects that ultimately fit into the system, thereby creating a technology platform to generate applications and markets. A "spiral development" approach can be implemented to provide continuous product development, thereby taking advantage of emerging technologies, applications, and markets
