The U.S. Army has given the green light to proceed into a competition to replace its aging, runway-dependent Shadow unmanned aircraft system with a new tactical drone.
The Army Requirements Oversight Council approved requirements for the service’s Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System, or FTUAS, in the form of an Abbreviated Capabilities Development Document, which will allow the program to move forward into a competitive prototyping phase.
The service has spent over a year assessing a variety of new and improved capabilities to replace the Textron-manufactured Shadow, culminating in a week-long rodeo earlier this year at Fort Benning, Georgia.
To help it evaluate requirements, 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 how the service would choose requirements and how it would shape tactics, techniques and procedures 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.
V-BAT
Another requirement could be that the system has to be able to run on JP-8 fuel. Not all systems brought to the table use that fuel type while some already do or are on the path to getting there. In the draft requirements documents, the ability to use the fuel was listed as objective.
The Army, according to FY22 budget justification documents, plans to spend $36.4 million to support component development and $12 million to initiate a competitive prototyping and integration effort.