Help could be on the way by late 2010 for British troops fighting in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, and evidence of it can be seen at a test site in Wales.

A runway extension is underway at QinetiQ’s Parc Aberporth test and evaluation airfield to accommodate trials and training flights of Watchkeeper, the unmanned aircraft that is supposed to take over the bulk of airborne surveillance duties for British forces in Afghanistan.

The Watchkeeper program, begun in 2005, is a major element of Britain’s plan to provide better protection for its forces in Afghanistan amid stinging criticism, including from the ranks of the military. At the moment, British forces in Helmand must rely on the bird’s-eye view from five Israel-built Hermes aircraft Britain rushed to the field in 2007, plus coverage from Predator aircraft flown by Royal Air Force pilots assigned to Creech Air Force Base, Nev.

Watchkeepers will patrol roads, build “pattern of life” intelligence about local populations and beam video to troops in the midst of battles with the Taliban.

The aircraft are being built in the U.K. by UAV Tactical Systems, a joint venture of Thales UK and Elbit Systems of Haifa, Israel. They are based on the design of Elbit’s Hermes 450. The U.K. plans to buy 54 of the video- and radar-equipped Watchkeepers for 800 million British pounds ($1.4 billion). Watchkeeper made its debut flight from Elbit’s Megiddo airfield in northern Israel in April 2008 to start basic handling trials. Throughout 2008 and 2009, additional equipment, such as the automatic takeoff and landing system, has been added and further trials undertaken.

Temporary segregated airspace will be established over central Wales for the Parc Aberporth trials. The previously planned runway extension at Parc Aberporth has been accelerated to accommodate the flights.

Troops from 32 Regiment Royal Artillery will train with the Watchkeepers at Parc Aberpoth and later at Salisbury Plain, a large military training area in southern England. These are the forces who will control the Watchkeepers in Helmand, similar to the way the U.S. Army controls its Shadow unmanned aircraft from within battle zones. Already, the five Hermes are providing the bulk of the airborne data “take” for British forces in Afghanistan, said Nick Miller, Thales UK’s business director for intelligence and unmanned aircraft systems.

Thales reports no major remaining hurdles in the program’s final stretch: The joint venture is “on schedule to achieve the deliveries and in-service dates for operational capability,” Thales said in prepared statement. The biggest challenge has been to ensure that all the pieces of onboard equipment talk to one another, Miller said.

British officials are in dire need of better equipment for detecting roadside bombs. “IEDs are a critical issue at the moment. We need more technical equipment to have 24/7 surveillance and the ability to target these people and kill them, if necessary, when they are laying these devices,” Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, the outgoing head of the British Army, said in the London Daily Telegraph and other publications.

Roadside bombs are responsible for about 80 percent of casualties in Afghanistan, according to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Watchkeepers’ cameras would scout for bomb planters and send real-time full-motion video to portable viewing screens carried by infantry, giving them the ability to see over hills or inside the mud-walled compounds that dot the Afghan landscape.

Operationally, the Hermes 450 usually operates at around 10,000 feet, with an 18,000-foot ceiling. It flies high enough that it can’t be seen nor heard on the ground. Thales personnel handle takeoffs and landings, with military personnel taking charge for the remainder of the sortie.

Watchkeeper constitutes a significant upgrade. The Hermes 450 electro-optical/infrared video camera is housed in a single dome under the front fuselage. Watchkeeper carries a second dome with a lightweight radar. This I-Master radar, also produced by Thales, weighs around 30 kilograms and can pick up vehicles and individuals moving at ranges of up to 20 kilometers. The radar gives Watchkeeper the ability to operate above cloud cover. Thales says that when the radar is used in its imaging mode together with daylight sensors, it can fill the shadows and dead zones created by viewing terrain at acute angles.

While Hermes 450 is essentially a collector of image intelligence, Watchkeeper is designed to be much more a part of a networked system, with greater dissemination and exploitation capabilities.

Watchkeeper’s sensor fit also includes a laser target indicator/designator and what Thales describes as a millimeter-wave radar system that allows it to take off and land automatically without GPS signals. Other automatic-landing systems, such as the one used by the Northrop Grumman FireScout unmanned helicopter, use GPS signals. In the case of Watchkeeper, a ground-based radar locks onto a beacon from the Watchkeeper and guides it in for the last one to two kilometers of flight.

Apart from removing the need for GPS coverage, the system eliminates the risk of pilot error at the most likely point for an accident to occur.

Watchkeeper also has a more rugged undercarriage and can take off from semi-prepared strips or even a soccer field, unlike Hermes, which requires a runway — albeit a short one.

Watchkeeper might ultimately do more than take pictures, however. A top British defense official revealed in November that the U.K. is considering arming the aircraft. ”We are currently conducting analysis to investigate the contribution that an armed Watchkeeper UAV system could make in current and future operations as part of its routine capability planning process,” said Ann Taylor, minister for international defense and security, under questioning from Lord Lewis Moonie, former junior minister for science and technology in the Ministry of Defence.

In a later statement, the MoD said: “We are still at an early stage of considering the benefits to current and future operations of arming Watchkeeper, and so as yet no decisions regarding which munitions should be used have been made.”

A possible weapon would be the Thales Lightweight Multi-role Missile (LMM). LMM would be laser-guided and capable of engaging a variety of targets, from fast-moving rigid inflatable boats to light armored vehicles. It would have a range of eight kilometers. Thales is aiming to have the LMM ready for service by 2011, not long after the first Watchkeepers are scheduled to be ready. The company showed an LMM beside a model of a generic UAV at the Defence Systems and Equipment International exhibition in London.

Unlike UAV systems such as the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper, Watchkeeper will not be actively flown by a pilot on the ground. It will be programmed to fly within specific zones, with noncommissioned officers supervising the aircraft from portable ground control stations.

The ground staff will click a computer mouse on a map of the area over which Watchkeeper is flying and the vehicle’s sensors will point at the designated spot. If the UAV is too far away for the sensors to acquire data, the vehicle will automatically fly there. “The sensors tell the aircraft where to move,” Miller said. The aircraft’s mission boundaries are set prior to takeoff and the vehicle will not stray outside those parameters.

A ground station will control up to three Watchkeepers simultaneously. The ground-UAV link is line-of-sight, which could mean one aircraft would act as a communications relay for another machine out of range of the ground station.