Business case assessment of unmanned systems level of autonomy

Abstract

The federal government has continually increased its spending on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) during the past decade. Efforts to drive down UAV costs have primarily focused on the physical characteristics of the UAV, such as weight, size, and shape. Due to the saturation of the UAV business in the federal sector, the civilian sector is not as penetrated. Hence, companies see this phenomenon as an opportunity to establish itself as the standard bearer in this sector. This thesis will address how Boeing can establish guidelines for business strategies in UAV offerings to potential clients. The key innovation that will be introduced is a modeling tool that will focus on simulation/trending and sensitivity analysis to help provide some insight into what these guidelines will be. The modeling tool will quantify many of the benefits and costs of the components and features of the production and utilization of UAVs. Other notable recommendations include defining a new data recording process to obtain sets of sample data to validate the results of the modeling tool and streamlining the complexity of additional features and enhancements that will be incorporated in future versions of the modeling tool.