Technology Scouting and Trend Analysis in Strategic Industries; The Case of Small UAV

The rapid development of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology is astounding, and its applications are becoming more diverse as these products evolve. The cheapness and ability to hide Small UAV has led to an increase in military applications such as intelligence, attacks, and so on. Therefore, countries must have a proper knowledge of this technology to protect its sky security. Understanding the future technologies of small UAV will make it possible to raise awareness and prevent surprises. The main purpose of this article is to identify future trends in Small UAV technologies. The research method used in it is of the "combined method" type, in that the initial list of trends was prepared with the observation approach and the "library study" method and was reviewed and improved in several expert meetings. The designated experts were more than 20 designers and officials related to Small UAV. For a more accurate analysis, the method "Trend Impact Analysis Method" was used and the opinions of the mentioned experts were collected in the form of a questionnaire and the probability of occurrence of each process and its importance were analyzed in the form of "Issues-Priority Matrix". The final results showed that "increasing levels of intelligence and collective cooperation between Small UAV" is the most important future trend of small birds, and "increasing resistance to offensive attack" is in the second place in the future developments of these birds.