The MUM-T concept is currently being explored by Airbus, Bell, Leonardo, and Sikorsky. We’ll tell you all about it, in the sections below.
The good news for pilots: MUM-T does not mean the diminishment of manned helicopter flight and unemployment for humans. Not at all. With a team of drones at their disposal, helicopter pilots can vastly ramp up their search-and-rescue surveillance over a target area, their ability to locate and report hot spots in fire zones, and the ability to detect leaks during pipeline maintenance flights. In a sense, a pilot will be like a queen bee directing a hive of worker bees. He or she will be vastly more capable than when flying a manned helicopter on its own and will truly multitask.
As for the military possibilities: MUM-T can provide true force multipliers for manned helicopter missions by adding unmanned rotorcraft to formations for everything from enemy surveillance and target location to payload delivery and after-attack monitoring. This is why MUM-T is being seriously investigated by the U.S. Army for its Future Vertical Lift (FVL) manned helicopter program.
According to the Army News Service (ANS), the Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team (FVL CFT) will be exploring how unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) can be teamed with manned helicopters for a range of missions. In this scenario, UAS is assigned to do ‘dull and dangerous’ tasks such as long-term persistent surveillance, or flying in biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear, and/or high- yield explosive contamination conditions.
“Advanced UAS is going to help us penetrate contested airspace in conjunction and in teaming with our lethal, capable future vertical lift rotorcraft,” said FVL CFT Brigadier General Walter Rugen in an interview with ANS. “That advanced team is going to be kind of an ecosystem that we kind of bring to the fight, that is going to be able to dominate a corridor or a window in a certain time where the enemy brings significant capabilities, so we can flow through as a joint force.”
Levels of MUM-T
To evaluate the possibilities of MUM-T, one has to assess how manned and unmanned flight will work together. Fortunately, this can be quantified using “The Five Levels of Interoperability” (LOI) scale:
LOI 1: indirect receipt of information from a UAS (or fleet of UASes) to a manned helicopter (or other manned assets) via the ground;
LOI 2: direct receipt of information from a UAS to a manned helicopter;
LOI 3: manned helicopter can control the payload of the UAS directly;
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LOI 4: manned helicopter can control the UAS platform and the UAS payload;
LOI 5: LOI 4 plus the ability to control launch and recovery of the UAS.
In the last three LOIs, someone on the manned helicopter has to control the UAS, at least until the day when UAS are capable of truly autonomous flight in real-time coordination with manned helicopters. This will require another operator to be added to the manned helicopter’s flight crew.
Here’s what the major helicopter OEMs are doing to achieve MUM-T at various LOIs.
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