Comparing Organic vs. Assigned UAV Support to the Maneuver Company

The US Army has plans to deploy a dedicated UAV system at every echelon. However, there are disadvantages to fielding such a large number of different and separately controlled vehicles. This research addresses one key part of this issue of selecting the right mix of UAV systems: How shall a company be supported? We consider two alternatives for the company commander, loosely based on systems currently under development: (1) the “Organic” system, which consists of two vehicle-transported VTOL vehicles of ~50 kg each assigned to each company; and (2) the “Assigned” system, a second tactical UAV system of the same type as the battalion’s system and maintained and launched at the battalion level, but operated in direct support of the companies. We are interested in the architectural decision of which of these two types of systems shows the most promise, not in selecting between two existing systems. Consequently, we focus on performance measures that are strongly affected by the architecture. We formulate the problem in a decision analysis framework, using a linear additive value model, in order to define the parameter regions where each of the alternatives is preferable. We identify 19 criteria for the decision, which we intend to capture all important considerations in making this selection. Of the 19 criteria, 9 show no difference between the two systems at the architectural level. Another 7 criteria we could only evaluate qualitatively, but in the aggregate these seem to strongly favour the Assigned system. The remaining three criteria are our focus because for them neither system has an obvious advantage, because some of them are of great importance (e.g. responsiveness), and because high-level analytical models for them can provide important insight into architectural performance. The three criteria are responsiveness, reliability, and number or aircraft in the air. Response time is modeled based on estimates of speed and distance, and for the Assigned system on a analytical queuing model. System reliability estimates are based continuous time Markov chain models. Number of aircraft in the air is also estimated with Markov chain models Using plausible parameters, we find an advantage for the Organic system on these four criteria, but not an extremely large one (0.53 vs. 0.47 on a scale of 1.00). We performed sensitivity analysis on each of the 20 inputs, using very wide ranges (generally +/a factor of 2). This showed the areas that have potential for erasing the relative advantage, of the Organic system. The Organic system has an advantage in average responsiveness that is strongly dependent