Reframing Military UAS Challenges Through Systems Engineering and Operational Reality

For more than two decades, defense roadmaps have envisioned a progression from remotely piloted unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) toward increasingly autonomous platforms, collaborative operations, and ultimately large-scale autonomous swarms. Although advances in autonomy and artificial intelligence have been significant, evidence from recent conflicts suggests that many of the most pressing challenges affecting military UAS stem not from insufficient autonomy, but from vulnerabilities in communications, navigation, endurance, logistics, survivability, and integration. This paper presents a systems-engineering assessment of the factors governing UAS performance in contested environments, drawing on operational lessons and published studies. The analysis examines communications robustness, operation in GNSS-denied environments, onboard computing constraints, endurance, sustainment, survivability, and the interactions among these elements across the broader UAS architecture. The findings indicate that assured communications, navigation, endurance, survivability, and sustainment form the foundation upon which advanced autonomous functions depend. The paper also evaluates the role of Digital Mission Engineering and Model-Based Systems Engineering in assessing future force concepts while highlighting their limitations in anticipating disruptive innovation. Its principal contribution is a framework that challenges prevailing investment priorities and argues that the future military value of UAS will depend less on higher levels of autonomy than on robust, adaptable, and sustainable architectures operating effectively in highly contested environments.