A Textron Aerosonde Unmanned Aerial Surveillance (UAS) vehicle, named Buck G, returns to the Expeditionary Sea Base ship USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB-4) from a 10- hour night surveillance in the Atlantic Ocean on Sept. 26, 2020. (Photo: U.S. Marine Corps by Sgt. Megan Roses/Released)

The Navy this week issued a  Request for Information (RFI) that aims to increase the number of partners to provide small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) performing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions for the Navy and Marine Corps.

The Jan. 21 RFI said the Navy is working to ultimately competitively procure Contractor Owned Contractor Operated (COCO) services to provide UAS ISR services for the Navy and Marine Corps Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems (STUAS) Program Office (PMA-263).

This follows the Navy’s initial notice on the issue in December, when it previewed a January virtual industry day, which was planned to be followed by two RFI’s to assess potential vendors capable of meeting current ISR requirements and future ISR requirements, respectively. The latest RFI covers expanding current requirements.

The industry day occurred on Jan. 16, after it was postponed from Jan. 8. 

The latest notice pointed out the current COCO UAS ISR services are being delivered under March 2021 performance-based Basic Ordering Agreements (BOAs) with Boeing’s Insitu, Inc. and Textron Systems. It said these firm-fixed-price contracts will expire in March 2026 and the RFI aims to award more BOAs to follow the current contract periods.

The RFI said contractors will be responsible for resources to produce sensor data like trained personnel, non-developmental UAS equipment, certifications, operation and maintenance, spares and product support.

“Contracted services would be in direct support of ISR missions requiring around the clock imagery and other sensor capability in support of those missions. Contractors shall be capable of providing ISR services on a normal and surge basis, day and night, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” the notice said.

The notice updated minimum requirements for the ISR services, including maintaining a 75 nautical mile range from a ground control station at land-based launch sites with a single vehicle or sea -based operations, 10-hour time on station at maximum range, ability to operate in a GPS-contested or degraded situations up to a minimum of 74dB for all flight phases, operate with commonly available fuels at forward-deployed locations, and operate at technology readiness level (TRL) eight. 

Interested parties are to submit brief capability statement packages by Feb. 5. 

The submissions should list factors including experience with ISR services; TRL of a candidate UAS; system anti-jam capabilities; details of air vehicle operations, range, and fielding requirements; software information; infrastructure requirements and provide sparing requirements based on 9,000 flight-hours per year per site for land-based and 2,400 flight-hours per year for ship-based ISR services.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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The Sierra Nevada Corp.’s unmanned Voly Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) aircraft. (Image: Sierra Nevada Corp.)

Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) on Dec. 5 said the Navy awarded it a prototype other transaction (OT) agreement to develop the technology to support autonomous unmanned air transport capability for naval logistics purposes.

Under this award, SNC will use its artificial intelligence systems with its Voly vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) Unnamed Aerial System (UAS) to help the Navy with its project to improve light cargo resupply capabilities via unmanned systems, the Blue Water Maritime Logistics UAS program.

The program specifically looks to solve a Navy challenge in being able to deliver light cargo over long ocean distances to reduce the burden on manned aircraft.

SNC said it will help develop the technology to help support the Navy with an on-demand, autonomous, unmanned air transport delivery capability needed for the U.S. Navy’s fleet and Military Sealift Command (MSC).

“The autonomous movement of critical parts and supplies in distributed maritime operations increases operational readiness and warfighting capability of embarked ships or aircraft,” the company said.

The company boasted its Voly UAS is a hybrid vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft with payload, range and endurance capabilities needed for multi-role operations. SNC underscored the aircraft can simultaneously carry cargo, additional fuel and sensors.

“SNC is proud to partner with the Navy to develop this critical game-changing technology. Our Voly solution with its long-haul capability, provides the technological advancements needed for safe and reliable resupply to geographically dispersed maritime environments,” Josh Walsh, SNC vice president of programs, said in a statement.

In 2020 the Navy said historic data showed warships often moved into partially or non-mission capable status due to logistics issues like electronics parts or assemblies that usually weigh under 50 pounds. Missions to deliver these kinds of parts are currently performed by H-60 helicopters or V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, but this review  spurred the service to look into using Group-3 size UAS.

At the time, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) had already acquired a Skyways Air Transportation Inc. drone for this Blue Water Maritime Logistics UAS experimental cargo transport.

SNC argued its unmanned VTOL aircraft has significant advantages over other UAVs or conventional fixed-wing aircraft for this kind of mission: they can perform point takeoff and landing with minimal space requirements, feature redundant lift motors and avionics, increased maneuverability, and the ability to land after engine or other catastrophic failures.

The company said its part in the Blue Water Maritime Logistics UAS program envisions Navy assets bringing large amounts of supplies to forward operating bases where fleets of unmanned aircraft can deliver needed parts to vessels in complicated maritime environments. This could help deliver the cargo to more widespread destinations.

“An unmanned resupply capability allows users to overcome the contested logistics challenges of the future and ensures forward-deployed units are stocked with parts and supplies needed for operations,” said Tim Harper, SNC vice president of business development. 

“The Voly hybrid UAS represents a new opportunity to completely disrupt how critical assets are delivered, by minimizing personnel and filling the gap where traditional delivery methods are unable to achieve the mission,” he continued.

Previously, in 2021 NAWCAD awarded PteroDynamics a contract to supply three of its VTOL drones for the Blue Water Maritime Logistics UAS program.

The Voly originated as a drone made by the former company Volansi, which SNC acquired in 2022.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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Pictured is the X-62A Variable Stability In-Flight Simulator Test Aircraft (VISTA) flying over Palmdale, Calif. on Aug. 26, 2022 (U.S. Air Force Photo)

The U.S. Air Force’s future Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) may need a significant amount of processing power for sensors and mission autonomy, and the service and industry thus face a challenge of ensuring that the drones meet size, weight, and power constraints at an Air Force targeted unit cost of $30 million or less.

“When you start talking about, on the sensor processing side, [the need for] 20 to 25 teraflops, each teraflop is one trillion calculations in a second, ” Mike Shortsleeve, the vice president of strategy and business development at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, said at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies’ inaugural Future of Airpower forum last Wednesday.

“That’s huge–just on the sensor side, dig through the clutter, find out what it [the object] is…a lot of compute processing power,” he said. “Things have gotten better–smaller, cheaper–to be able to do things, but, for us, the big aspect of this is on the sensing side where the bulk of that processing is gonna take place. What we have done, from a surrogate testing perspective, with this is we’ve looked at putting processing on one aircraft, and it feeds the others [aircraft]. We’ve done this in a live, virtual construct as well.”

“We’re trying to figure out different ways to make that happen,” he said of reducing SWaP-C–size, weight, power and cost–for CCA. “Processing, while the outlook is good, is still challenging.”

In April, the Air Force said that it had chosen General Atomics and another privately-held drone maker, Anduril Industries, for the first round of CCA–the so-called Increment 1. General Atomics offered its Gambit design and Anduril its Fury.

The first CCAs are to be air-to-air, but others may be those for intelligence or jamming missions. The Air Force has said that it plans to field 150 CCAs in the next five years to complement F-35s and possibly other manned fighters, including a manned Next Generation Air Dominance aircraft and the F-15EX.

The Air Force is refining its concept for CCA Increment 2 and has announced a buy of more Increment 1 CCAs.

“There is a huge opportunity to talk about data links [for CCA],” Mike Benitez, Shield AI‘s senior director of strategic product development and a former Air Force F-35 pilot, said at the Mitchell forum. “The data is so important. If you can make sense of that on something like a Wedgetail, an F-35, or an F-22, you can push that perception of the environment to the cognition core [on CCA], that is the real power of how you break the cost curve of these [CCA] platforms. Otherwise, you’re just going to have an unmanned F-35.”

Over the last four years, the Lockheed Martin X-62 Variable In-flight Simulation Test Aircraft (VISTA)–an autonomous F-16–flew more than a dozen dog fights in tests with traditional fighters in DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution experiments, and, though the X-62 had no “perception” sensors of its own, it received situational awareness data about where the “bandits” were over a data pod on the X-62’s wing, Benitez said.

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MQ-25 Air Vehicle Pilots Lt. Matt Pence (forward) and Lt. Steven Wilster conduct a test run to monitor the Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System ground control station, located at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., as the system commands the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) MQ-20 Avenger surrogate, located at the company’s test facility in California, in preparation for demonstration event in November 2024. (Photo: U.S. Navy)

The Navy tested command and control of an unmanned aircraft using its Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control Station (UMCS) for the first time this week in a demo using the  General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) MQ-20 Avenger and Lockheed Martin software.

Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) said GA-ASI initiated this joint demonstration that on Nov. 5 had the Unmanned Carrier Aviation program office PMA-268 use its UMCS with the MD-5 Ground Control Station (GCS), loaded with the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works MDCX platform, command and control the GA MQ-20 Avenger.

GA said the MQ-20 technology demonstrator acted as a surrogate to demonstrate how the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control Station (UMCS) can command various unmanned aircraft with autonomous maneuvers. The Navy noted this proves the UMCS can command other aircraft beyond the under-development MQ-25 carrier-based unmanned tanker aircraft.

Navy operators used an MD-5 Ground Control Station (GCS) out of the Navy’s Patuxent River, Md., test facility to command and control the MQ-20 flown out of GA-ASI’s Desert Horizon flight operations facility in El Mirage, Calif.

The team was able to operate over this large distance by using an unspecified proliferated Low Earth Orbit (pLEO) satellite constellation datalink. 

NAVAIR said it will use the data from this demonstration to refine program requirements and develop more key technologies. The team plans to conduct more digital and live surrogate test flights to demonstrate various aspects of CCAs including autonomy, mission systems, crewed-uncrewed teaming, advanced communications and more command and control development.

Lockheed Martin boasted its Skunk Works MDCX autonomy platform enabled the Navy air vehicle pilots to control the MQ-20 during its California flight.

NAVAIR describes the UMCS as a system-of-systems required for MQ-25 command and control that should apply to other Navy unmanned aircraft control in the future. 

GA underscored this was the first time any General Atomics UAS conducted bi-directional communications using the UMCS operation codes while also performing autonomous behavior, using the pLEO datalink.

“UMCS is laying a foundation that will enable control of all unmanned carrier aircraft, starting with the MQ-25 aircraft. The UMCS opens the door for efficiently introducing future unmanned systems into the complex carrier command and control architecture,” Capt. Daniel Fucito, PMA-268 program manager, said in a statement.

“This was a huge step for unmanned naval aviation. This demo showcased UMCS’s first live control of an unmanned air vehicle, and it was great to be part of history in the making. The team is paving the way for integrating critical unmanned capability across the joint force to combat the high-end threat our warfighters face today and in the future,” Lt. Steven Wilster, MQ-25 AVP, added.

General Atomics characterized this demonstration as part of the overall effort to move technology forward for the future Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), for which the Navy and Air Force intend future manned fighters to command several unmanned wingmen to perform missions. 

The Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force are collaborating under a Tri-service Memorandum of Understanding for critical subsystems for CCAs, with the Navy leading development of a common control architecture and GCS, in collaboration with Lockheed Martin.

GA-ASI said the MQ-20 is being used “extensively” as a surrogate CCA testbed for autonomous technology development.

In April, the Air Force downselected to GA and Anduril for CCA testing, with them both set to move forward on detailed designs, manufacture and testing of production-representative test articles for the CCA program.

“This effort was a prime example of industry partners and government agencies working together to perform important new capabilities. The team efficiently and safely demonstrated aircraft flight control from another government agency’s control station. Using GA-ASI’s Tactical Autonomy Core Ecosystem (TacACE) software, the team not only executed airborne commands, but did so in a safe, controlled environment,” GA-ASI president David Alexander, said in a statement.

John Clark, vice president and general manager at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, said they are happy to collaborate with the Navy to help move toward its air wing of the future vision.

“The MDCX made it possible to rapidly integrate the MQ-20 ‘autonomy core’ with the UMCS, demonstrating common control capability and third-party platform integration,” Clark said in a statement.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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Avionics supplier Honeywell on Monday announced the start of an investment and collaboration agreement with autonomy provider Near Earth Autonomy to bid on for autonomous rotorcraft.

Honeywell said the initial example of this agreement is their teaming with Leonardo Helicopters as a competitor in the Marine Corps Aerial Logistics Connector (ALC) prototype program. 

In July, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) selected Near Earth to lead this ALC team to offer advanced autonomy on the Leonardo AW139 helicopter. At the time, the company said this 20 month-long initiative aims to demonstrate solutions able to transport various kinds of cargo and for casualty evacuation in a contested environment in both crewed and uncrewed configurations.

NAVAIR’s prototype program specifically seeks to demonstrate rapid deployment of cargo up to 3,000 pounds over a 200 nautical mile radius, with the Marine Corps looking for aircraft to be operational by 2030. The prototype program uses an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA). 

Earlier this year, the Marine Corps first selected the unmanned version of Airbus’ UH-72 Lakota helicopter as a competitor in ALC. At the time, Airbus said with a contract agreement for Middle Tier Acquisition rapid prototyping with an OTA, the goal is to transition the prototype to fielding within five years.

The AW139 Near Earth-led ALC team is dividing the work into having Leonardo implement a fast-loading, security and unloading system for Joint Modular Intermodal Containers (JMIC) on its AW139; Honeywell currently provides the helicopter’s autopilot and will augment it for autonomous take-off and landing; and Near Earth will demonstrate a full integrated logistics system with onboard autonomy to guide the aircraft and modify flight trajectory to avoid hazards.

Near Earth will also demonstrate mission autonomy so “lightly trained” personnel can request, dispatch, monitor and retask supply deliveries.

“The ALC program is focused on achieving assured autonomy on an unprecedented scale. We are excited to partner with Honeywell, a leader in avionics and flight control, to create a comprehensive system for aerial logistics that can rapidly be put into commonplace use,” Sanjiv Singh, CEO of Near Earth, said in a statement.

Honeywell underscored the larger collaboration with Near Earth will allow them to jointly explore more opportunities for rotorcraft and unmanned aerial systems beyond the ALC Marine Corps initiative.

“Uncrewed aircraft are a vital means of keeping service men and women out of harm’s way in contested environments. But they must also be advanced enough to reliably and efficiently perform their missions, even in GPS-denied environments. Together with Near Earth, we’re seeking to advance the reliability and functionality of autonomous technology and build products that support autonomous operations globally,” Matt Milas, president for defense and space at Honeywell Aerospace Technologies, said in a statement.

Milas also noted they plan to focus on retrofitting existing platforms so that they will “be able to deliver rapid, scalable solutions.”

Honeywell said the agreement will support the company’s “portfolio alignment” to three megatrends, the future of aviation, automation, and energy transition.

This is the second autonomous partnership Honeywell unveiled this month. It recently announced a partnership with autonomous military aircraft software developer Merlin to focus on fixed-wing military aircraft.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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The U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program may be a fit for a five and a half pound BriteStorm stand-in jammer that Leonardo said that it is developing to allow the U.S. and allies to counter integrated air defense systems and fly deep behind enemy lines.

BriteStorm’s Miniature Techniques Generator, paired with Transmit Receive Modules and antennas, “will deliver world beating stand-in jamming capabilities, protecting friendly forces against early warning, surveillance, and target tracking radars,” Leonardo said. “BriteStorm can act as a decoy to stimulate enemy air defenses. BriteStorm can also produce obscuration and confusion techniques to deny the enemy from building up a complete air picture.”

In the United Kingdom, the Royal Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office has bought and flown BriteStorm in trials, and Leonardo views DoD as a “key potential customer for BriteStorm,” the company said.

“The BriteStorm payload is designed to be installed on the widest possible range of UAVs and launched effects,” Leonardo said. “It will equip each platform with an advanced array of digital deception techniques, deployable at long range.”

“Depending on the situation, BriteStorm’s effects can range from barraging the enemy system with electronic noise to more sophisticated techniques such as creating dozens of realistic ‘ghost’ fighter jet signatures, confusing and misdirecting the enemy response,” the company said.

The Air Force has said that the first CCAs will be air-to-air but that other CCAs could tackle other missions, such as jamming and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

Anduril Industries and General Atomics may conduct first flights in the next year of their Fury and Gambit offerings for the first increment of CCA–first flights that could result soon thereafter in the beginning of developmental test (DT) under the Air Force CCA Experimental Operations Unit at Nellis AFB, Nev.’s 53rd Wing.

The long pole in the tent for CCA is full autonomy for launch, mission completion, and recovery. DT could aid in ironing out any wrinkles in autonomy.

The Air Force has talked about 3 to 5 air-to-air CCAs under the control of a Lockheed Martin F-35 or manned Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter, but Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said last month that the conceptual number of CCAs per manned fighter is now higher, an indication perhaps of not only drones’ rising technological sophistication but of the possibility that the manned NGAD program may end or be significantly curtailed.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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Honeywell in May 2023 successfully completed the first flight of its Honeywell Anthem integrated flight deck using Honeywell’s Pilatus PC-12 test aircraft. (Photo: Honeywell)

Honeywell, a supplier of avionics systems, and Merlin, a small company developing software for autonomous military aviation, have partnered to bring more autonomy to military and commercial aircraft.

The initial focus of the partnership will be fixed-wing military aircraft, the companies said on Thursday. The companies will evaluate transport aircraft, tankers, and fixed-wing special mission aircraft, Honeywell said in a response to questions.

Merlin, based in Boston, has developed the Merlin Pilot AI software and is taking a crawl, walk, fly approach to integrating its product on military aircraft. The partnership with Honeywell adheres to this approach.

The companies said Merlin’s software will be integrated with Honeywell’s Anthem avionics suite to reduce pilot workload and enhance operational efficiency for special missions.

“By enabling single-pilot operations and automating key tasks, this partnership provides a scalable and safe solution to ease pilot workload and optimize fleet operations for both the military and commercial aviation industry,” Bob Buddecke, president, Electronic Solutions at Honeywell Aerospace Technologies, said in a statement.

Anthem is not currently used on military aircraft. The company began flight-testing with the integrated flight deck in 2023. The avionics product is the first cloud-connected cockpit system that can be customized for most aircraft, Honeywell says.

Honeywell said the memorandum of understanding with Merlin support the company’s alignment with megatrends in automating aviation.

Merlin’s AI pilot is being flight tested on a Cessna aircraft to prove out the technology. The software then will be integrated into Air Force C-130J and KC-135 aircraft for further development.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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Anduril’s Bolt-M small loitering munition. (Photo: Anduril Industries)

Maintaining a steady drumbeat of new product releases, Anduril Industries on Thursday unveiled its Bolt family of small, man-packable autonomous air vehicles that include surveillance and munition variants, which the Marine Corps is evaluating for its Organic Precision Fires-Light (OPF-Light) program.

Anduril’s commitment to artificial intelligence and autonomy is a key attribute of the new unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), including waypoint navigation and manual control in GPS-denied environments. The goal is to simplify operations by lessening the amount of thinking required for, and training needed by, an operator.

Using the example of remotely guided UAS that are “changing the battlefield” in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War to strike targets, Chris Brose, Anduril’s chief growth officer, said these first person view drones require skilled pilots and additional manual support.

“But at the same time, there’s those limitations to scale in terms of expert pilots, other manpower, and really what we’re trying to do with Bolt is make autonomous many of those core functions from the standpoint of a man-packable, AI-enabled strike system that can be very quickly by a single operator, set up, launched,” Brose told reporters on Wednesday.

A user display, be that a tablet, laptop, tactical assault kit, or some other control station gives an operator battlespace awareness and known and unknown targets can be tracked and followed at extended range, and struck based on an operator command, he said. The quadcopter can engage from any angle of attack, allowing it to strike the most vulnerable part of a target, the company said.

In addition to surveilling and striking ground targets, Bolt can be used for counter-maritime and counter-air missions, Brose said, highlighting the lineage to Anduril’s original counter-UAS drone, Anvil, which is a small quadcopter UAS that slams into its target in mid-air.

Bolt, the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) variant, and Bolt-M, the munition carrier, are both lightweight, 12.1 pounds for the former, and between 13 and 15 pounds for the latter depending on the explosive payload, which can weigh up to 3 pounds. Some of the capabilities of the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAS include 45-plus minute and 40-plus minute flight times for the ISR and “M” variants, maximum ranges of over 12 miles, flight speeds of around 60 mph, and tool-less battery swapping.

Both variants include Anduril’s AI-based Lattice software system that enables autonomy, pre-flight and in-flight mission planning, and can be used in challenging and contested environments, day and night, Anduril said.

“It’s just now understood that sort of basic table stakes are the ability for those systems, autonomous aircraft, or other systems, to be able to operate in highly contested and often denied communications and electromagnetic spectrum environments,” Brose said of the lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.

Bolt includes a two-axis electro-optical/infrared gimbal seeker, and Bolt-M also features the same gimbal seeker, an optical proximity fuze, and an electronic safe and arm device with safe return to base functionality.

Bolt has been in development for years and Anduril is delivering Bolt-M for the Marine Corp’s OPF-L for testing and evaluation over the next six months. The Marines are also evaluating systems provided by AeroVironment—bidding the tube-launched Switchblade 300—and Teledyne’s Teledyne FLIR segment—offering the Rogue 1 VTOL small UAS—for the loitering munition program.

Anduril is eyeing potential opportunities with the Army for loitering munitions. Brose said the service is “doing an enormous amount of thinking and sort of revising how it thinks” about its requirements for different “sizes and classes” of the lethal unmanned systems. He sees Bolt having the chance to compete in the small loitering munition space, highlighting Anduril’s focus on AI, autonomy, speed, and warhead as differentiators.

Bolt-M is modular and is designed to carry Anduril and third-party warheads for anti-personnel and anti-material attack. The company highlighted that it designed munition payloads with specialized kinetic solutions developer Kraken Kinetics.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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The Army has completed initial flight demonstrations and Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) evaluations with Textron Systems and Griffon Aerospace’s offerings for the Future Tactical UAS (FTUAS) program, the service said on Tuesday.

The update on the latest FTUAS milestones arrives as the two firms continue prototype development ahead of delivering production-representative test systems to the Army and the service’s plans to potentially move into procurement in 2026.

“Each vendor will continue prototype development, incorporate feedback and lessons learned and deliver production representative prototypes for use in future government-led testing at [the Redstone Test Center in Huntsville, Alabama] ultimately informing the Army’s selection for the FTUAS program of record,” the Army said on Tuesday.

The Army in September 2023 selected Textron and Griffon Aerospace to move forward in the prototyping effort to develop an enduring FTUAS capability, and in April awarded the third and fourth contract options for the FTUAS prototyping effort following a critical design review with the two firms’ offerings.

Option 3 is covering flight demonstrations and the MOSA verification testing, while Option 4 will include delivery of production representative prototypes for further testing and operational demonstrations that will culminate in a production readiness review.

Textron is offering its Aerosonde Mk. 4.8 Hybrid Quad UAS and Griffon Aerospace is pitching its Valiant drone platform for the FTUAS program.

The Army has said FTUAS aims to replace the legacy Shadow drone, also built by Textron, with a “vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), runway-independent, reduced acoustic signature aircraft that can be transported organically while providing commanders with ‘on the move’ reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition capabilities.

The MOSA conformance evaluations occurred in May, the Army said, and involved replacing each the mission computers on each vendors’ prototypes with a third-party surrogate mission computer and a mix of third-party and vendor software.

“Swapping the hardware and software allowed an independent assessor to measure the openness and modularity of the prototype systems to determine the extent to which MOSA objectives were satisfied. This MOSA conformance verification demonstrated early implementation of and alignment with required MOSA functional boundaries and will serve as a model for follow-on MOSA evaluations,” the Army said. FTUAS’ [MOSA] approach allows the system to keep pace with technology through rapid capability insertion.”

The flight demonstrations at the Redstone Test Center occurred after the MOSA verification event, with Texton and Griffin Aerospace conducting multiple flights to demonstrate their offerings’ capabilities for Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL), reduced acoustic signature, on-the-move command and control, rapid emplacement, system integration and flight performance, the Army noted.

Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, told reporters in April the Army’s FTUAS prototyping effort will inform its push to “aggressively” get after procurement plans, potentially looking at 2026 to begin buying the new drone systems.

“We’re still in competition there, but we’ll have both those aircraft built and we’ll have them out in the field here getting tested later this year is what we anticipate. We’ll get that feedback in, incorporate it into any final design updates or test updates and then move forward with the program starting out in ‘26 with procurement. We’re posturing ourselves appropriately there to aggressively get after procurement with the resources that we’re provided,” Phillips said at the time.

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The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) on Wednesday said it has selected solutions from three companies to demonstrate and test commercial dual-use technologies in small drones to be able to operate in electromagnetically contested environments akin to the battlefield experiences in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War.

Auterion, ModalAI, and Neros Technologies were selected from 99 submissions and will begin demonstrating and testing their prototype solutions within two months of contract award, DIU said. The testing phase will end nine months after contract award and could result in a production contract for one or more vendors, it said.

DIU’s goal in the electromagnetic interference (EMI) project is to identify solutions used in small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) that can be controlled during operations in electromagnetically contested space.

“We have seen first hand in Ukraine the quick tempo and change in war and how spectrum challenges affect tactical operations,” David Michelson, DIU autonomy portfolio director, said in a statement. “This is a vitally important effort to provide critical tools to allow our warfighters to win if forced to fight, and enable them to respond quickly to changing battlefield conditions.”

DIU said the EMI effort part of the evolution of its Blue UAS program where it tests and vets drones and related components and software to ensure compliance with policies and cybersecurity, enabling faster purchases by DoD and other government customers. The EMI project will allow users to give feedback so that vendors can rapidly iterate their products to stay ahead of EMI threats.

DIU also said the project will take advantage of “commercial off-the-shelf components to keep supply chain costs low to provide solutions that are affordable, attritable, and can be scaled.” It also said open standards will enable constant updates to quickly mitigate threats.

The EMI effort follows a hackathon DIU hosted earlier this summer in Poland to find solutions challenges encountered by Ukrainian forces when their small drones are being jammed by Russian forces on the battlefield.

Auterion, which is based in Arlington, Va., develops an operating system, and auto-pilot software for small drones. San Diego-based ModalAI makes small drones, and software that enables drones to fly in GPS-denied environments. Neros, which is based in Los Angeles, offers little on its website but says it is vertically integrating the development and manufacture of unmanned defense systems, and that it operates like a “Skunk Works” for unmanned systems.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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