Thank you all for coming. I appreciate it as I know it will make a difference to the success of our work here. Let's have a couple of words about logistics from Deborah Barnes and an overview of how the session will be structured from Langdon Morris.

The work with UAV crosses over a lot of different arenas and agencies. We need to figure out what all the capabilities are that people want so we know how to fund the programs we need. We're looking out about 10 years into the future. We're looking at 4 different categories: Homeland Security, commercial, land management, earth science. We want to make an assessment so we know where the technology gaps are.

We want to get a lot of buy-in from the different folks. We want to document the future mission needs. We want to determine what the state of art will be. We want to create an efficient program. Today we have a draft document. The basic source of information comes from our previous workshops. In the last couple of weeks, we finished a workshop on Homeland Security.

By March of 2006 we want to have a first version of these proposals. This is intended to be a living document. As of today, we have 35 missions in earth sciences, firefighting missions and wildlife management. One of the things we want to do is focus on cost drivers. This is something the DOD is not that interested in, but we want to address that.

The two capabilities that showed up the most is access to NAS, national airspace, and over the horizon communication. These probably come as no surprise. The outside command and control is an issue. We want the UAVs to be fairly autonomous. We want them to be able to be driven by an operator. Some of our other desires are to have formation flight, multi-ship operations and high altitude.

From a Homeland security perspective, we'd like to have more emphasis on all-weather and have 24/7 capability and some covert action.

I want to give you an overview on VSP HALE activities. We refer to the UAVs we're interested in as high altitude long endurance. We measure the endurance in weeks and months.

The science community is our customer in terms of technology. Within the aeronautics sector there is Dryden, Langley, and Ames.

We're looking at how to make supersonic jets more powerful. We're still working on hypersonics.

In the Vehicle Systems Program, we're looking at the strategic structure of the program. We have 7 sectors of which we're the Unmanned Air Vehicles. We decided to be called the HALE sector in order to have some distance from the DOD work.

The legacy of HALE comes out of ERAS program of the 1990's. We're at the point now where we want to go to longer durations. There will be the consumable fuel paths with larger payload capabilities. The only limitation of this system is the liability of the power.

We want to demonstrate the capabilities of the HALE UAVs, such as OTH communications, multi-ship operations, hydrogen fueled, readily deployable, and persistent observation.

Here is our swoosh chart that shows our capabilities development across time. Our stretch goals include the performance of our regenerative energy systems along with others. We also have a gotcha chart that includes some of our challenges which drive our approach. Our researchers are working on meeting these challenges.

We look at propulsion and consumables. We look at fuel cells, oxide systems, tank technologies, cryogenics, and packaging for the planetary piece. In our technology areas, we reviewed the items with commercial input. We looked at software reliability requirements. We focused on a collaborative decision environment. We considered control technologies and how you reconfigure the craft in flight. We looked at how to alleviate structural loads. We looked at the HALE wing concepts. Planetary flight act ivies depend on who the customer is. We had the ARES project.

The basic focus is on the flight and systems demonstrations. By 2009, we want to have flight capabilities for UAVs that is unrestricted NAS at certain elevations. Right now Access 5 is a collaboration between several groups. The objective is to achieve access into ever-expanding airspace. That's from the operational aspect but we also look at the certification piece. It's about leveraging the various agencies and their access and agreements.

There are roughly 13 work packages. There are collision-avoidance activities going on. There are fly/no-fly areas that we have to map out. We may not be able to fly some of these platforms over New York City. We want to expand the simulation capabilities we have now. This is a way to check out quickly our decisions.

Here is a model of our integrated access to the NAS. We want to have cooperative agreements for that. This has been an eye-opener for NASA to find out where we can and cannot fly. Next year there will be a collaboration between NASA and USFS for western states fire missions. There will be some discussions on this over the next couple of days.

We'd like to increase the endurance capabilities of the Planetary Flight Vehicles (PFV). We need to have additional navigational capabilities. We're going to focus on carrier breaking for the sonic boom issues. We're going to focus on the two platforms for our demonstration roadmap. We're hoping to have our first flight in 2011.

We're doing high altitude drop with ARES. We have a 14-day and 100-day demonstrators. We have notational craft, that are similar to Helios. These are motherships that can drop the daughterships for additional measurements.

The ARES comes out of a chute. The wings unfold and there's a pullout. ARES is all about the science, such as crystal magnetism, and near-surface atmospheric chemistry.

There is no GPS on Mars, so it will need to have its own navigational system. It gets signals from the satellites and can know when it is time to head home where it will recharge itself and be ready to go again.

We need to be working aircraft performance issues and collaboration.

You have a well laid out program. What advice do you have for other programs? Of all the mission profiles, how did the focus on architecture technology help you? And why HALE and not low altitude?

It's the control of funding. The DOD is putting a lot of money in low altitude, so our niche is in HALE. If we develop them, the DOD will use them. If they see we're funding systems that DOD is already doing, we'll get our funding cut. We've been given the message that we need to stay out of the DOD or DHS areas. We can work collaboratively with them. We work closely with the Air Force and see where we can collaborate.

We could leverage off of this if we understood that it's not just the high altitude community. We stay under the radar with the earth sciences. Dryden is getting a Predator B.

At a NASA level, we need to protect the UAV investment. In terms of our assessment, we acknowledge that we need from the boundary layer and all the way to the other end, but we only have limited resources.

We used to call ourselves the UAV sector, but we've had to rename to the HALE because we'll lose funding because people think we're subsidizing the DOD. Vehicle systems doesn't want to be tied to the civilian UAV assessment. We can't be tainted with the UAV label.

Does the high altitude part of it make it better to potentially span the area of operations to the DC8? If you can fly anywhere in the U.S., you'll need need designated operating zone, but if you're up higher can you have more accessibility?

You'll be the only one up there more than likely. The designated ones are lower altitude.

The original remote sensing was originally at Johnson Space Center and then was later moved to Salt Lake City. We want to know what the Forest Service sees within the science and application community. NASA has had a mentality of "build it and they will come" but now we want the user community to tell us what they need.

I would like to give you the perspective from a land management side. I want to give you a general context and the challenges we're facing. We're responsible for observation, fire mapping, and successful training and technology transfer for people to use imagery more effectively to update resources information. THis is how you manage resources effectively. We need this to do a good job for the public. We're responsible for managing millions of acres. We manage land for a variety of activities. We manage some of the most pristine habitats. There are very conflicting needs for our resources.

We're very distributed. We're similar to the BLM and the National Park Service. We have increasing threats from large and catastrophic fires. We try to manage that through suppression technology and the introduction of plants and insect species. We also deal with encroachment of urban areas which border our lands.

We deal with also translating requirements into remote sensing in order to get information to other agencies that need it. There are certain types of information that you need higher resolution than others, so we need a variety of sensing tools that can be nested.

We try to identify areas that are underserved. We need to keep in mind what's affordable and can dovetail with what we have existing already.

Our fire mappers tell us that both small and large UAVs can help us. Since the DOE controls the airspace over fires we need to work with them. NASA Ames is a key supporter in this collaboration.

Some of the objectives we're looking at is to improve our sensors systems. We need higher sensitivities We also need to improve our data handling. THere are some new exciting approaches to data compression. We have an advisory committee made up of a representative sample of experts and users.

We have a couple of demonstrations projects. We're planning a western states mapping project. The objective is to show how the fire community can use UAVs for missions. We can use these technologies for mapping, communication relays, and real-time observations.

Some of our demonstrations objectives are to manage the acquisition and operating costs. We want to utilize what's out there now. We need a 4-8 hour duration and a real-time data downlink. We need tracking radar. We need night flight capabilities.

The Sense and View Display System (SAVDS) will help enhance perceptions users have for safety issues. The mission we're planning for the summer of 2006 is the UAV western states fire mission with real-time go-replication.

We want to implement the intelligent mission management. We want to interact with real-time events.

Some other natural resources management applications occur for vegetation and landcover mapping, forest health surveys, riparian mapping, and rangeland assessments.

High resolution imagery can complement or replace very expensive field measurements. We want to map pools and rivers. We want to create accurate GIS data. A lot of our federal lands are used for raising animals. We need to know what the conditions of our range vegetation to determine whether the land can handle the range animals.

A lot of our public lands are used for drug production, not just marijuana but also for meth labs. This makes the lands not safe for recreating.

We want to get the right information to the right people at the right time. The UAVs can help us do this.

Questions

Q: Aren't you also working the borders?
A: Yes. We do have a lot of border surveillance.

Q: What is required for a type 2 system?
A: The difference is in the single band light scanner without advanced GPS, production capacity, fire protection. They're not as sophisticated.

Let's first do introductions and then talk about the design for the rest of the day.

What makes a good collaboration? And effective work as a team? Attributes of success?

• To be clear about what we're here to accomplish
• Regular communications
• Thinking outside the box
• Definition of success
• Recognize team members' strengths

Everyone loves to be innovation, but the organizational boundaries inhibit this. We're here to remove these barriers. We're hoping that in this environment we can foster the ability to be innovative and creative.

We're talking about future technologies so we may not know the environment we're actually creating for. Let's allow all the assumptions we each have to play out. There is no way to prove who is right. It will only be in time that we will know who's assumptions were correct. There are not limitations in trying to force consensus.

When it comes to the assignment, think about the context of the scenario. Do not stick slavishly to the working of the assignements. If there is a better question, answer that.

We want to have an environment where people can speak freely.

We found that the white boards are a very effective medium for collaboration. if you just express your ideas verbally, they might get lost. If you write them on the white boards, they become an object. You can see relationships. Jay has created imagery that captures the essence of the presentations. This is very effective in getting ideas across.

Let's get on to our first assignment.