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The U.S. Army said it has selected five companies to build prototypes as part of a competition to eventually provide the services of a tactical unmanned aircraft system of the future.
According to the statement of the command, Aerovironment, Griffon Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Textron Systems have received contracts in the amount of $ 1 to $ 25 million for participation in five stages of development and four additional periods over the next three years.
The army began considering requirements to replace its Shadow drone manufactured by Textron in 2018 and by 2019 had narrowed the circle of competitors to the Martin UAV team-Northrop Grumman, Textron Systems, L3Harris Technologies and Arcturus UAV. In 2021 Aerovironment acquired Arcturus. Shield AI company bought Martin UAVs in the same year.
The leadership of the US Army evaluated four proposed drone variants during the year with active units, culminating in a test competition in the spring of 2021 at Fort Benning, Georgia. In August 2022, the army signed an $8 million contract with Aerovironment to supply the Jump 20 UAV as a temporary FTUAS facility, which will be transferred to one brigade.
Major General Rob Barry, executive director of the Army's aviation program, told Defense News last fall.
The new line-up of bidders includes all the old ones, except L3Harris. Griffon Aerospace is a newcomer.
According to representatives of the US army, the Increment 2 project will include a series of reviews of UAV designs during the base period of the contract and two additional periods (there is no exact information on how long these periods will last). The remaining participants will demonstrate their capabilities in real flight demonstrations and undergo a third-party verification of the architecture of modular open systems during the third period of the contract. That is, there is also a third period.
Although the army has not yet officially specified the exact terms of the contract, in accordance with the budget documents for the 2023 fiscal year, it plans to complete its competitive prototype development in the first quarter of 2025. But, as the practice of recent years shows, even in the United States, they began to shift the deadlines for the execution of contracts in the military sphere, as they say, to the right.
