$129M for 48 More RQ-7B Shadow UAVs

RQ-7 Shadow UAV(click to expand) AAI Corporation, the defense subsidiary of United Industrial Corporation, has received a $129 million award from the U.S. Army for 12 additional Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV) systems. Each system includes 4 advanced RQ-7B air vehicles, 2 ground control stations, and associated components and support equipment, and will be delivered over the next 18 months. The 7B block upgrade for Shadow systems incorporates changes to the wing, tail, and avionics. The Aug. 2004 upgrade was the first major system upgrade since Shadow TUAVs went into production in 2002. The RQ-7B’s wing has been made larger to accommodate the anticipated addition of the Tactical Common Data Link (TCDL) to the battlefield by the U.S. Army, which also improves the aerodynamic properties of the wing and enhance vehicle performance. In addition, the size of the tail of the air vehicle has been increased to aerodynamically balance the changes in the wing. Overall, the changes result in extending total endurance time for each air vehicle from five hours to more than six hours per mission. Moreover, improvements to the Shadow’s avionics systems and payload have been incorporated in the new block upgrade in order to increase target […]