AeroVironment Receives Puma 3 AE and Raven Unmanned Aircraft System Orders from United States Air Force
July 22, 2021 at 06:40 pm IST
Share
AeroVironment, Inc. announced receipt of two firm-fixed-price orders totaling $15,940,378 from the United States Air Force. The orders, received on April 19, 2021 and May 6, 2021, encompass the procurement of Puma™ 3 AE unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and spares packages, as well as Raven® UAS spares packages. The Puma 3 AE systems and spares were delivered on April 30, 2021. Delivery of the Raven spares is anticipated by November 2021. The AeroVironment Puma 3 AE UAS is designed for land and maritime operations. Capable of landing in water or on land, the all-environment Puma 3 AE and Mantis i45 EO/IR sensor suite empower operators with extended flight time and a level of imaging capability never before available in the tactical UAS class. The hand-launched Puma 3 AE has a wingspan of 9.2 feet, weighs 15 pounds and can operate for up to 2.5 hours. The aircraft also has a range of 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) with a standard antenna, and up to 37.2 miles (60 kilometers) with AeroVironment’s Long-Range Tracking Antenna (LRTA). It also features reduced system packaging with a flyable configuration and GCS in one case. AeroVironment’s Raven system is designed for rapid deployment and high mobility for operations requiring low-altitude intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. With a wingspan of 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) and weighing just 4.2 pounds (1.9 kilograms), the hand-launched Raven provides situational awareness, day or night, with an operational range of 6.2 miles (10 kilometers). The Raven’s Mantis i23 EO/IR gimbaled payload delivers real-time video or infrared imagery to ground control and remote viewing stations.
AeroVironment, Inc. designs, develops, produces, delivers and supports a portfolio of intelligent, multi-domain robotic systems and related services for government agencies and businesses. It supplies unmanned systems (UMS), loitering munitions systems (LMS) and related services primarily to organizations within the United States Government and to international allied governments. Its segments include Unmanned Systems (UMS), Loitering Munition Systems (LMS) and MacCready Works (MW). The UMS segment focuses primarily on small, unmanned aircraft system (UAS) products, medium UAS products, and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) products. The LMS segment focuses primarily on tube-launched aircraft that deploy with the push of a button and fly at higher speeds than small UAS products. It also includes customer-funded research and development programs. The MW segment focuses on research and development in the areas of robotics, sensors, software analytics, data intelligence and connectivity.