[Pilotless aircraft are one of my favourite topics, which I’ve mentioned many times over the years. Jan]

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Canada’s air force will cross a technological threshhold this month with the establishment in Afghanistan of its first organized flight of pilotless aircraft.

An entire flight of Sperwer tactical uninhabited aerial vehicles will soon be fully operational for reconnaissance missions over the windswept desert and craggy mountains passes in the vicinity of Kandahar.

A few of the remote-controlled aircraft are already deployed, but more are on the way.

Using real-time video and a host of infrared and other specialized sensors, the drones are sent aloft to monitor the surrounding countryside and to track down insurgents, hopefully before they become a threat to Canada’s 2,200 troops on the ground.

Although the Canadian military has been using the devices — known as TUAVs — on an individual basis for the past couple of years, the air force has now formally added a flight of pilotless aircraft to 408 Squadron, a Griffon tactical helicopter formation based in Edmonton.

“It can be described as a milestone,” said Maj. John Casey, a helicopter pilot and the commander of the TUAV flight in Kanadahar.

“It’s a milestone in the ongoing transformation of the air force and the Canadian Forces.”

For security reasons, military officials on the ground here will not say how many drones are in use, but an average manned flight involves six to 12 aircraft.

Casey said troops on the ground seem happy with the quality of reports they’re getting. If there’s any resistance to the idea of remote-controlled aircraft, it’s coming from pilots, he said.

One officer who co-ordinates the intelligence gathered by the drone said it is a vast improvement over the more conventional methods.

“The old way, if we didn’t know what was down a particular road, we’d send a patrol down and that patrol would be reliant on its own eyeballs and senses to detect any threats,” said Capt. Christopher Hunt, 30, who used to lead foot reconnaissance patrols.

“With the Sperwer we can send it down and it picks out the threats itself. So it provides a lot more security to the soldiers on the ground,” Hunt said.

The growing popularity of TUAVs was demonstrated last winter when Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives said part of their Arctic sovereignty strategy involves monitoring remote frozen inlets with drones. In 2003, defence researchers began debating whether Canada could effectively replace its CF-18 jet fighters with combat TUAVs.

The French-made Sperwers are blasted into the air on a truck-mounted rail-launch system, going from zero to 160 kilometres per hour in one-quarter of a second.

Part of the attraction of the Sperwer — Dutch for Sparrow Hawk — is that it doesn’t need a runaway to land, unlike the bigger American drones, such the Predator or Global Hawk.

The units are controlled by technicians on the ground, who sit in an area that resembles the cockpit of an aircraft. They monitor a variety of sensor data produced by the TUAV’s onboard computer, which in turn is relayed to troops in the field.

The air force is eager to get further into the business of flying TUAVs, mostly because of the safety factor.

Having drones available means highly-trained fixed-wing and helicopter pilots can be saved for combat missions instead of being exposed to danger in what are often routine intelligence-gathering missions.

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=bbbdf273-9595-4b75-bdba-0d57efc1a6bc&k=85198