Chung, Timothy H.

This student-based research explores the threats posed by small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS), specifically those in the low-cost, hobby-grade categories, and evaluates methods to address those threats through the scope of Kill Chain analysis, endeavoring to Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, and Assess (F2T2EA) an encroaching sUAS. The research will focus on evaluating the capabilities offered by commercially available hobby grade sUAS, whether the systems comes ready-to-fly (RTF) or is an assembly of compiled parts, as a representative sample of the systems that could be employed against private, public, and military installations, where the threat is addressed through the development of a series of Design Reference Missions (DRMs). The spectrum of locations that could be threatened by a sUAS will be referred to jointly as “protected installations,'' while still analyzing distinctions such as location, surrounding infrastructure, maximum occupancy, and value as a military target. This analysis will include the development of operational scenarios, review of available defensive systems, survey of compounding environmental parameters, review of pertinent regulatory information, and the development of mission threads and kill chains for the specific DRM. An expanded kill-chain will be developed for the defense against sUAS to include elements beyond the F2T2EA domain. An analysis of the kill chain from the OPFOR perspective will provide insights and allow the identification of the most exploitable installation weaknesses from the safety and security perspectives, while applying Risk Management Analysis.
Systems Engineering
Office of the Secretary of the Air Force/FMBIB
Air Force
2016