Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are anticipated to be a key element of sixth generation (6G) networks, serving as aerial base stations, relays, sensing platforms, edge nodes, and autonomous swarms. Such capabilities enable services such as emergency coverage, disaster response, smart cities, intelligent transportation, precision agriculture, surveillance, and Internet of Drones applications. However, UAV enabled 6G systems are exposed to a large attack surface because they operate on open wireless channels, collect sensitive data, and rely increasingly on artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, edge computing, software defined networking (SDN), and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). This survey gives a holistic view of UAV enabled 6G architectures, systematic selection of studies, security threats, privacy leakage, intelligent countermeasures, comparative complexity, practical deployment constraints, and open research challenges, based on a curated evidence base of 59 studies following a PRISMA-style selection workflow.