In a three-dimensional (3D) disaster rescue mission environment, multi-drone mission assignments and path planning are challenging. Aiming at this problem, a mission assignment method based on adaptive genetic algorithms (AGA) and a path planning method using sine–cosine particle swarm optimization (SCPSO) are proposed. First, an original 3D digital terrain model is constructed. Second, common threat sources in disaster rescue environments are modeled, including mountains, transmission towers, and severe weather. Third, a cost–revenue function that considers factors such as drone performance, demand for mission points, elevation cost, and threat sources, is formulated to assign missions to multiple drones. Fourth, an AGA is employed to realize the multi-drone mission assignment. To enhance convergence speed and optimize performance in finding the optimal solution, an AGA using both the roulette method and the elite retention method is proposed. Additionally, the parameters of the AGA are adjusted according to the changes in the fitness function. Furthermore, the improved circle algorithm is also used to preprocess the mission sequence for AGA. Finally, based on the sine–cosine function model, a SCPSO is proposed for planning the optimal flight path between adjacent task points. In addition, the inertia and acceleration coefficients of linear weights are designed for SCPSO so as to enhance its performance to escape the local minimum, explore the search space more thoroughly, and achieve the purpose of global optimization. A multitude of simulation experiments have demonstrated the validity of our method.

Maritime UAV operations face challenges in real-time ship detection. Complex ocean backgrounds, drastic scale variations, and prevalent distant small targets create difficulties. We propose MCB-RT-DETR, a real-time detection transformer enhanced by multi-component boosting. This method builds upon the RT-DETR architecture. It significantly improves detection under wave interference, lighting changes, and scale differences. Key innovations address these challenges. An Orthogonal Channel Attention (Ortho) mechanism preserves high-frequency edge details in the backbone network. Receptive Field Attention Convolution (RFAConv) enhances robustness against background clutter. A Small Object Detail Enhancement Pyramid (SOD-EPN) strengthens small-target representation. SOD-EPN combines SPDConv with multi-scale CSP-OmniKernel transformations. The neck network integrates ultra-lightweight DySample upsampling. This enables content-aware sampling for precise multi-scale localization. The method maintains high computational efficiency. Experiments on the SeaDronesSee dataset show significant improvements. MCB-RT-DETR achieves 82.9% mAP@0.5 and 49.7% mAP@0.5:0.95. These correspond to improvements of 4.5% and 3.4% relative to the baseline model. Inference speed maintains 50 FPS for real-time processing. The outstanding performance in cross-dataset tests further validates the algorithm’s strong generalization capability on DIOR remote sensing images and VisDrone2019 aerial scenes. The method provides a reliable visual perception solution for autonomous maritime UAV operations.