Looking for Replacement to Shadow UAV
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The U.S. Army wants to replace its currently fielded runway-dependent RQ-7B Shadow unmanned aircraft system with a new tactical drone.
The Army’s Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System, or FTUAS, is moving forward to a competitive prototyping phase.
The FTUAS will be a low to medium altitude aircraft with modern datalinks, Electro-Optical/Infra-Red (EO/ IR) sensors, Infra-Red/Laser pointer/Laser designator/Laser range finder, data encryption, manned-unmanned teaming capabilities and the ability to operate autonomously.
After the service has spent over a year assessing a variety of new and improved capabilities, the Army selected four UAS in 2019 and handed them over to soldiers to use and provide feedback on each system. The feedback helped shape the requirements for a future system.
Martin UAV and a Northrop Grumman team provided the V-Bat UAS, Textron brought its Aerosonde HQ, Arcturus-UAV offered up the Jump 20 system and L3Harris supplied the FVR-90 for the soldier evaluations.
A service spokesperson told defensenews.com that because of the successful FTUAS demonstrations, “the Army is considering options for acceleration in addition to the base program.”
The service will move into a competitive prototyping phase in the fourth quarter of FY22 and will make a rapid fielding decision in the second quarter of FY25 followed by a full-rate production decision.
