The Marine Corps has selected AeroVironment [AVAV], Anduril Industries
and Teledyne FLIR Defense [TDY] for a new competitive program to provide lightweight loitering munitions for infantry squads.
The three firms picked for the Organic Precision Fires-Light (OPF-L) program will work under a potential eight-year, $249 million contract that covers building, testing and delivering their non-developmental armed drones.
“The flexibility, adaptability and breadth of our proposed OPF-L platform will boost small unit lethality across the large target set Marines must confront in today’s battlespace,” JihFen Lei, executive vice president and general manager of Teledyne FLIR Defense, said in a statement. “We look forward to delivering on this highly advanced technology and working closely with the Marine Corps to augment its force projection – and protection – capabilities.”
The Marine Corps previously detailed its interest in providing infantry squads with precision-strike capabilities that can be organically deployed against adversaries at beyond line-of-sight ranges.
An earlier work statement for OPF-L noted the Marines Corps’ requirement for solutions that are “man-packable and consist of the loitering munition, related ground control station, training simulator and ancillary equipment needed to support the technology.
The Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for OPF-L begins with a five-year base period followed by a three-year option period. The Navy on Monday evening said that Teledyne’s initial award is worth $12.1 million, AeroVironment’s $8.9 million, and Anduril’s $6.5 million. The service said eight bids were submitted.
Of three selected vendors, Teledyne FLIR has provided details of its work on the new program and noted its loitering munition solution “has proven highly successful in tests against both moving and stationary armor, vehicles, and dismounted targets.”
“The ability to recover and reuse the new system will lighten the pack load for Marines while increasing their warfighting effectiveness,” Teledyne FLIR said in a statement.
Teledyne FLIR said it is set to deliver the first 127 systems to the Marine Corps later this summer for test and evaluation.
Joe Ailinger, a Teledyne FLIR Defense spokesman, confirmed to Defense Daily that the company’s solution for OPF-L is its first loitering munition capability and that the system has a quadcopter design.
Further details on Teledyne FLIR’s loitering munition system for OPF-L are expected to be announced in May, according to Ailinger.
The Navy said the contract were awarded on April 9 and work will be completed by April 2026.