Too little and too late and once the smaller companies get Pentagon contracts, they will be destroyed in the Pentagon’s Soviet acquisition system.
“While the Armament Directorate remains committed to our highly-capable legacy products, we have become convinced that widening the aperture to include more non-traditional aerospace companies offers the best chance at accomplishing our cost-per-unit goals, project timeline, and production quantity goals,” Cassie Johnson, the armament directorate’s ETV program manager, said in the release.
The open-architecture drone is to fly at least 500 nautical miles, deliver a kinetic payload, and use commercially-available subsystems, according to a solicitation DIU released in September.
The Pentagon’s current way of building drones is slowed down by “exquisite components” and “labor-intensive manufacturing processes,” DIU said.
“Vendors are incorporating commercial off-the-shelf components wherever possible to mitigate supply chain bottlenecks and to keep costs low. Vendors will also leverage modern design for manufacturing approaches, ensuring air vehicles are not over-engineered for their intended mission, minimize use of expensive materials, and enable on-call high-rate production that is not possible with more exquisite counterparts,” today’s announcement said.
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2024/06/pentagon-looks-beyond-primes-cheaper-drones/397074/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl
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