REMOTE-SPLIT OPERATIONS: How to fly a drone you never see
RSO is frequently employed by the military to conduct operations with its larger UAS, like the MQ-9 Reaper and the RQ-4 Global Hawk, but it remains relatively unknown among civilian UAS pilots. However, that is likely to change as RSO opens up new possibilities for students, researchers and others who need access to drones and the unique capabilities that they provide but cannot be physically present where and when the flight is occurring.
BORN IN BATTLE
“As far as the military goes, RSO really became mainstream in the 1990s,” according to Dr. David Thirtyacre, the chair of the Department of Flight at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide Campus. “The basic idea here is that there is geographic separation between the Mission Control Element (MCE) and the Launch and Recovery Element (LRE).”
According to Thirtyacre, there were multiple advantages to this approach, which continue to be true today. First, the footprint of the forward-deployed elements of the system is smaller—with fewer personnel and less hardware required in the war zone. Second, a relatively slow aircraft like MQ-9 needs to be based near the action to respond to fast-changing circumstances on the ground.
“The LRE uses a line-of-sight communications system to control the aircraft,
