Four Companies to Compete for Autonomous Skyborg Drone Contract for Manned-Unmanned Teaming

Submitted by tatwood on Thu, 08/13/2020 - 15:22

According to Oriana Pawlyk of Military.com, the vehicles are “are intended to be reusable but cheap enough that they can be destroyed without significant cost.” For more background, see BreakingDefense.com.  

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the announcement is who didn’t win, says Roman Schweizer of Cowen Washington Research Group: “We’re surprised that Lockheed Martin didn’t make the cut.”  2019 Flight photo of Q-58A Valkyrie demonstrator courtesy of Holly Jordan/AIR FORCE RESEARCH LABORATORY. Opener concept design image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

Thanks to CDR David Place (USN/Ret), davidplace47[at]gmail[dot]com, and Robin E. Alexander, President ATC, alexander technical[at]gmail[dot]com, for their assistance with this report, the background for which appeared in their USN - # 20 - 16 - 11 AUGUST 2020 edition of the UNMANNED SYSTEMS NEWS (USN).

David distributes the Unmanned Systems News (USN), a free, comprehensive newsletter in PDF format every week or two, as well as serial news flashes, from which this NREF news update was sourced. To be included in his distribution, simply send David a subscribe request to davidplace47[at]gmail[dot]com.