Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Market (2013 - 2018)

In today’s context UAV’s play an important role in varied missions such as military attacks, border surveillance, mapping, surveying, weather determination and regional law enforcements. This technology has grown at a rapid pace and production companies present across the globe, as the country want to showcase their military strength in order to wade off potential attacks. Civilian usage of UAV operations have still not started at a pace can be expected as the local regulations apprehended the usage. Also, misunderstanding over the lack of safety and privacy of citizens has hindered their operational capabilities.

UAV’s have developed from radio controlled model airplanes to urbane aircraft that today play a unique role in many public missions and also have the potential to do so for many civil missions as well. Special airworthiness certificates will be obtaining to civilian operators for experimental purposes, which unfortunately exclude operations for compensation or hire.

According to industry estimates, UAS operations will increase manifold in a variety of key military and civil areas. About 50 U.S. companies, universities, and government organizations in the U.S. are developing over 150 different unmanned aircraft designs. From an operational, infrastructure and safety perspective, this presents a number of challenges due to the diversity of aircraft, control stations, levels of autonomy, and communications methods. UAV’s width is of a wide spectrum of size, endurance, and performance characteristics, often different from manned aircraft.

Sophisticated navigation and communications technologies were not available few years back, and increases in armed forces telecommunications satellite bandwidth have made remote operation of UAV’s more realistic. The wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan has also increased the demand for UAV’s, as identification of and strikes against targets hiding among civilian populations required persistent surveillance. Manned systems could accomplish many if not all of the same goals. 

But unmanned systems reduce the risk to our war fighters by providing a sophisticated stand-off capability that supports intelligence, command and control, targeting, and weapons delivery. These systems also improve situational alertness and reduce many of the poignant hazards inherent in air and ground combat, thus decreasing the likelihood of causing civilian noncombatant casualties. UAVs have gained favor as ways to reduce risk to combat troops have been established, the cost of hardware and the reaction time in a surgical strike and to conduct missions in areas that can be difficult to access or otherwise considered too high-risk for manned aircraft or personnel on the ground.

Key Take-Aways

• The global UAV market size can be expected to grow to $8,351.11 million by 2018.
• (HALE/MALE/SUAV) Market has the highest business potential throughout the study period.
• USA and Israel will be the maximum revenue generator, among the countries manufacturing UAV’s.
• SPUAV (Solar Powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) will be one of the major technological advances in the near future.
• ”We believe the UAV market in EU will take off and grow rapidly in the coming years from now. Major obstacle may be, if national regulations become too complicated.”  Ola Fristrom, Managing Director, SmartPlanes AB.
• General Atomics Aeronautical Sytems is the leader in UAV market with 18.78% of the market share.

ASD Reports