MULTI-CRITERIA ASSESSMENT OF PROTECTED RADIO, COGNITIVE RADIO, AND SPOOLED OPTICAL FIBER COMMAND LINKS FOR TACTICAL FPV UAVS UNDER ELECTRONIC WARFARE

First-person-view (FPV) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under electronic warfare (EW) need a command link that survives jamming and does not reveal the operator. Spooled optical fiber is an alternative to protected and cognitive radio, yet published comparisons remain mostly qualitative. This paper compares plain radio, protected radio, cognitive radio, and spooled single-mode fiber using link-budget analysis, a survivability model, and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with seven criteria and two mission scenarios. Under strong EW at tactical range, fiber obtains the highest score (4.52 on a five-point scale, against 3.13 for protected radio); under weak EW at long range, protected radio (3.63) and fiber (3.59) are tied within judgment uncertainty. Because the judgments come from the authors, robustness is tested with TOPSIS, weight interpolation, critical weights, and 20,000 Monte Carlo samples. Fiber ranks first in 99.7% of samples in the first scenario; in the second no alternative dominates, and TOPSIS ranks fiber last. A break-even analysis shows that fiber tolerates high technical failure probabilities only under a strong radio threat. Fiber is therefore a mission-specific rather than a universal solution.