Customs and Border Protection in October awarded contracts to four vendors to provide small drones for field evaluations to inform future procurements.
The awards went to Vantage Robotics, Teal Drones, Atlantic Diving Supply, and W.S. Darley & Co. The value of each contract was redacted by CBP in an Oct. 19 notice in the government procurement website Sam.gov. although CBP late provided the award totals.
CBP said that Vantage will supply 70 of its Vesper unmanned aircraft system (UAS) under a $683,679 order, Teal 15 of its Golden Eagle UAS under a $324,136 order, Atlantic Diving 80 Skydio X2D for $1.8 million, and W.S. Darley will provide 73 of Parrot’s ANAFI USA for $1.1 million. Red Cat Holdings [RCAT], which owns Teal, says its contract is worth $1 million.
The awards were made under a potential $90 million, five-year Blanket Purchase Agreement that CBP announced on Dec. 21, 2021, that also included Teledyne Technologies [TDY] in addition to the four companies listed above. Due to “surging demand” for the company’s military solutions as a result of the war in Ukraine and events elsewhere, Teledyne FLIR Defense has discontinued sales of its small ION M440 drone to focus on its somewhat larger drones and payloads, a company spokesman tells HSR.
All the drones CBP are acquiring are quadcopters.
All four commercial, made in the U.S. drones have been vetted by the Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit’s Blue small UAS program to ensure compliance with U.S. policies, including cybersecurity.
“CBP intends to seek competition in future acquisitions for sUAS by competing orders among the Blue sUAS BPA holders,” the agency says in the notice. “By acquiring Blue sUAS through the intended actions with each vendor, CBP will obtain operational familiarity with each sUAS which will inform capabilities of the various brand name drones in different climates, environments, operational settings, conditions, and other settings for market research and future competitive acquisitions.”
CBP told HSR that the new sUAS are already in operational use and are being evaluated. In the BPA notice last December, the agency said the drones will provide supplemental airborne reconnaissance, surveillance, and tracking capability to enhance situational awareness for field commanders and agents in areas that lack nearby traditional surveillance system or available manned air support.
The Border Patrol, which is part of CBP, has previously purchases several small UAS for its missions and testing, including the Lockheed Martin [LMT] Indago 3, Teledyne’s Skyraider quadcopters, and AeroVironment’s [AVAV] Puma 3 fixed-wing aircraft.
Teal Offering
Jeff Thompson, CEO of Red Cat, tells HSR that Teal will be supplying the latest Golden Eagle drones, which are equipped with the Teledyne FLIR Hadron 640 camera for day and night use, including in smoke, flog and glare.
“Our real focus at Red Cat is nighttime because most of the missions everyone does, are at nighttime,” Thompson said. “And we think they were one of the only companies that are focusing on nighttime…that’s when the missions are done.”
Thompson also said that a single operator using the company’s ground control station can control four Golden Eye drones at once, freeing up manpower and allowing for more work to be done. And through a new partnership with Tomahawk Robotics, the Teal 4-Ship control capability can be upgraded to include other UAS and ground robots on a single pane of glass.
Tomahawk Robotic’ Kinesis ecosystem also allows an operator to hand off control of one or more unmanned systems to another operator without shutting down operations.
Thompson said all future shipments of its drone products will include the Kinesis software.
Given the size of CBP’s BPA for the small drones, Thompson said if the evaluations go well, the agency has a lot of runway to procure a significant number of small UAS in the coming years.
The new CBP contract follow awards made by the Coast Guard in September to Atlantic Diving, worth $697,000, and W. S. Darley, valued at $700,000, for the Skydio X2D and ANAFI USA drones respectively. The Coast Guard currently uses a larger small UAS, the Group 2 ScanEagle from Boeing [BA] for missions aboard its fleet of national security cutters. The Blue sUAS being acquired by CBP and the Coast Guard are Group 1 drones, meaning they have a maximum gross take-off weight between zero and 20 pounds.