Effective Range of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in the Malaysian Army Tactical Operations

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has been used in military application even during the conflicts in World War II. The utilization of UAV was further expanded during the Vietnam War and the role of “eye in the sky” has seen UAV became the ultimate ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance) tool for almost all conflicts. The evolution of UAV in various sizes and features will see UAV saturating the battlefield theater’s cloud in the future. This paper is to present the concept of operations of UAV in the military, segmented by units in battle to enable researchers to concentrate their research on types of UAV to suit the needs of the Malaysian Army. Using effective firepower range of all Malaysian Army arsenals and the commonality in terms of tasking, this study is able to establish the classes in terms of range needed for UAV in the Malaysian Army. From the observation, it is clear that the majority of the intended UAV will be operating in the less than 3 km combat radius.