Textron Systems awarded Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS) contracts for three additional US Navy Littoral Combat Ships (LCS).
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Press Release, Hunt Valley MD, 18 November 2024: Textron Systems Corporation, a Textron Inc. company, announced today that it has been awarded a task order valued at up to $47 million by the US Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) to provide COCO UAS services to three Independence Class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) deploying to 5th Fleet. This award follows a 2023 contract to provide UAS support to LCSs, bringing the total number of US Navy ships supported by the Aerosonde UAS to 10.
Textron Systems will deploy its Aerosonde UAS and skilled personnel to provide mission overwatch and extended range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) services with enhanced mission payloads as seen aboard the Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB)-4 and ESB-5, as well as two DDG-class ships and three LCSs. In December 2023, the Aerosonde UAS took its inaugural operational flight from its first LCS, the LCS-28 USS Savannah.
“Textron Systems has delivered COCO services with our Aerosonde UAS for over a decade, demonstrating the flexibility and value a model like this brings to the services,” said David Phillips, Senior Vice President Air, Land and Sea Systems. “Because we are managing the full life cycle of the system, including technology integration, human factors, spares and repairs, employing the Aerosonde UAS enables the Navy customer to focus solely on their mission. We extend the customer’s capabilities across the mission packages of each ship reliably and quickly.”
The Aerosonde UAS offers multi-mission capability built upon a family of systems which have amassed over 700,000 flight hours over more than 10 years. The system is equipped for multiple payload configurations with both vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) and fixed-wing options.
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