Managing Army Airspace for Integrated Manned and Unmanned Aviation Operations

With its widespread success in Afghanistan and Iraq, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is quickly evolving into an integral member of military aviation operations. As such, the integration of manned and unmanned aircraft requires significant emphasis on developing the airspace management structure to ensure the safety of pilots in the air in addition to troops and non-combatants on the ground. The Army Airspace Management Architecture (AAMA) presented in this paper represents a preliminary operational concept of a system capable of effectively managing and sustaining manned and unmanned operations in a close airspace environment. The AAMA relies on four key participants: the aviator, the UAV operator, the air traffic controller, and the airspace manager. Using a network of advanced software technologies and real-time data/voice communication, the AAMA promotes enhanced situational awareness for all airspace users and provides Air Traffic Control (ATC) the means to separate, advise, and de-conflict aircraft in the close airspace environment, reducing the workload of the airspace users. Lastly, the AAMA concept can potentially add an unprecedented level of safety to the close airspace environment. The development and integration of airspace simulation can determine the safety of multiple operations by analyzing the probability of aircraft collision based upon the number of aircraft operating within the airspace. The benefits of this simulation are twofold: it can analyze the safety of an operation based upon the number of aircraft and the size of the airspace, and it can determine a quantitative measure of safe, marginal, and unsafe levels of airspace saturation.