The U.S. Air Force is eyeing smaller unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) than it has traditionally operated, and all U.S. services are interested in systems with vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capability, ranking officers said this week at the Xponential conference in New Orleans. Manufacturers touted new such designs at the event sponsored by the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

Speaking on May 3 during a “Defense Leadership Perspectives” panel, Col. Travis Burdine, Air Force division chief of remotely piloted aircraft operations, said the service in the next month will release a strategic plan for using small UAS, including Group 3 aircraft. The Department of Defense defines Group 3 as vehicles weighing between 55 pounds and 1,320 pounds that normally operate below 18,000 feet. Among current UAS that fall within that category are the Army’s RQ-7B Shadow (460 pounds mtow) and the Marine Corps’ RQ-21A Blackjack (135 pounds mtow).

Unlike those catapult-launched aircraft, the Air Force is eyeing air-launched UAS. Without offering specifics, Burdine cited the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s “Gremlins” program, which aims to develop a means for a host bomber or transport to launch volleys of low-cost, reusable air vehicles that would disrupt air defenses or perform other missions and then be retrieved by another aircraft in flight.

“We are now focusing on the ‘smalls,’” Burdine said. “We now believe with size, weight and power and Moore’s law doing what it’s doing, what we do with Predator we can now do with something that’s smaller than Predator, something that’s cheaper than Predator, something that we can make changes to at a faster rate [and] uses less than 168 people per 20-hour sortie.”

With an emphasis on efficiency and conserving resources, the Air Force also plans to enable its MQ-9 Reapers to perform automatic takeoffs and landings—capability already built into the Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle. General Atomics manufactures both aircraft.

“It takes a lot of time and needs a lot of structure for a combat pilot to learn that stuff,” Burdine said. “If we have auto takeoff and landing we could do that a lot faster and [have] less people back home in the training business. It would allow us to go to other airfields so that we can divert and not have to cancel for weather so often, and it would get us out of the frequency band we’re in right now, which is not a very good one. We are committed to that—the Army’s figured it out with the MQ-1C Gray Eagle; we’re going to do that on our MQ-9s as fast as we can.”

When a questioner asked if VTOL capability will be “relevant” in the future, Army, Navy and Air Force officers answered affirmatively. “I think they’re relevant now as well as in the future because it helps us drive the expeditionary mission. You can’t be tied to a wide-open space with a glideslope all of the time,” said Col. Courtney Cote, manager of the Army’s UAS Project Office.

“From an Air Force perspective, we’re very interested in that. It’s a game-changing technology and we don’t need a whole bunch of people on the ground,” said Burdine. Rear Adm. Robert Girrier, Navy director for unmanned warfare systems, said his service also has an interest in VTOL capability.

Among manufacturers exhibiting at Xponential, Insitu featured its developmental Flying Launch and Recovery System (Flares) for the ScanEagle and other fixed-wing UAS. Co-developed with Hood Technology Corp., Flares is a quadcopter platform that lifts the ScanEagle to a launch altitude, then recovers it in flight with a suspended rope, providing the same functions as the ScanEagle’s current catapult launcher and SkyHook recovery boom. The Boeing subsidiary plans to begin producing Flares in late 2017. “Every single customer we have wants this,” said Andrew Hayes, Insitu director of advanced development.

Textron Systems said it has integrated the Aerosonde small UAS with Latitude Engineering’s Hybrid Quadrotor technology as a proof of concept—providing the Aerosonde with VTOL capability. Arcturus UAV has built the Jump 15 and 20, small fixed-wing aircraft fitted with four vertical rotors to raise them to launch level and lower them to land. Martin UAV, of Addison, Texas, has a cooperative research and development agreement with the Navy to develop a “specialized variant” of its V-Bat, a ducted fan VTOL aircraft designed for shipboard operations.