The Border Patrol is conducting market research of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) that can fly like a fixed-wing aircraft but take off and land vertically as part of its monitoring of the northern and southern U.S. borders.
“Hybrid lift solutions that may meet CBP requirements combine the advantages of VTOL and fixed wing solutions into a single airframe,” CBP says in an Aug. 5 Request for Information posted on the government’s procurement website Fedbizopps.gov. “These solutions will provide Border Patrol agents with the ability to extend their missions beyond the capability of existing VTOL solutions while avoiding the potential airframe damage caused by landing fixed wing solutions.”
VTOL refers to vertical take-off-and-landing. Johns Hopkins Univ. Applied Physics Laboratory and the Border Patrol conducted an analysis of alternatives for the sUAS and found that a “suite of sUAS platforms is necessary to address all of our mission sets,” a CBP spokesperson told Defense Daily on Tuesday via an email response to questions.
The suite of platforms includes VTOL, fixed-wing and hybrid sUAS, the spokesperson said.
Customs and Border Protection, the parent component that the Border Patrol is part of, established an sUAS program of record in October 2018 after conducting a pilot evaluation using different drones. The agency says it has acquired the Indago 3, Skyraider and Puma 3 sUAS as part of its requirement.
The Indago and Skyraider sUAS are quadcopter VTOL systems supplied by Lockheed Martin [LMT] and FLIR Systems [FLIR], respectively. The Puma is a hand-launched fixed-wing sUAS made by AeroVironment [AVAV].
The spokesperson said that technology demonstrations identified several VTOL and fixed-wing systems “as most closely meeting Border Patrol requirements,” leading to “initial, limited procurements of these systems for deployments.”
The Border Patrol wants to transport the Hybrid Platform (HP) sUAS in several form factors, from a single backpack to several hard cases that need to be carried by a vehicle close to the final deployment location and operate in a wide-range of environmental conditions, extreme temperature ranges, and in day and night operations. The systems must be ruggedized for transport over difficult terrain and be operable for the duration of an agent’s 10-hour shift.
The HP sUAS systems will provide operators with a video stream to detect, identify, classify and track items of interest in “rugged, remote, rural, urban, riverine, and coastal environments,” the RFI says. The systems will also be used to vector agents to interdict the item of interest and be equipped with a laser illuminator to help agents position themselves to interdict the target.
The numbers of HP sUAS systems needed in each Border Patrol sector will vary based on geography, trained operators, available equipment, and need, the RFI says.
Given the rapid advances in sUAS technology, the Border Patrol will stay in touch with industry to see what new technologies will help its operations, the spokesperson said.
Responses to the Aug. 5 RFI are due by Sept. 13. For its initial purchase of sUAS, the Border Patrol used an RFI as part of its new approach to acquiring new capabilities rapidly.
After releasing an RFI for sUAS, the Border Patrol conducted its demonstrations of various systems and then acquired them through the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). The DLA provides combat logistics support for the Defense Department and also maintains stock items and contracts that other agencies can use to acquire products.
The latest RFI doesn’t outline procurement plans for an HP sUAS.