Lockheed Martin [LMT] was awarded a $4.6 million contract by the Defense Department’s Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) for continued development of a maritime canister-launched small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS).
The company is working on a re-configurable version of the collapsible wing Vector Hawk sUAS. The Vector Hawk design for a man packable solution includes a fixed-wing aircraft for standard and long endurance missions, a collapsible fixed-wing aircraft that can be launched from a tube from land or water, a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, and a tilt-rotor enabling VTOL with transition to forward flight.
“We are extending our sUAS capabilities to tactical maritime users with the Vector Hawk’s innovative canister deployment and launch ability,” Jay McConville, Lockheed Martin director of business development for unmanned solutions, said in a statement.
Vector Hawk is capable of autonomous flight and landing, which shifts the operational focus from flying to conducting the mission, Lockheed Martin said. It also includes fail-safes to ensure it can return to the user or auto-land due to problems like loss of communication or low power.
The company describes Vector Hawk as having a gross takeoff weight of four pounds and a vertical profile of four inches on the product webpage. It has a data link featuring a high bandwidth software defined radio, mesh networking (including 3G, 4G, and LTE cellular), over-the-air reconfiguration, and can use a variety of waveforms.
The company also highlighted the sUAS is built with an open architecture “to enable rapid technology and payload integration.”