Jane Edwards
The Department of the Navy has begun its search for potential industry sources of a small unmanned aerial system designed to perform vertical take-off and landing operations.
A FedBizOpps notice posted Oct. 12 says the VTOL-based small UAS will work to help the U.S. Marine Corps perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions in any environmental conditions.
The Naval Air Systems Command is interested in battery-powered, VTOL-based drones that could provide full-motion videos through electro-optical/infrared sensors and have man-portable ground control stations and a minimum endurance of 30 minutes.
Interested vendors should provide information on the drone’s mission control characteristics and flight modes, noise signature, sensor type, software operating system, mapping software, data link, navigation, Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module GPS, obstacle avoidance capability and payloads.
NAVAIR also wants information on the production lead-time, operators and maintenance manuals, capacity to provide logistics support and field service representatives as well as experience in small UAS development.
Responses to the sources sought notice are due Oct. 26.
