Parrot, a drone manufacturer, has been selected to take part in the Blue Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) programme by the US Army and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).
The DIU is a Department of Defense organisation that accelerates commercial technology for national defense.
The Blue sUAS programme is a spin-off of the Short-Range Reconnaissance (SRR) programme launched by the Army and DIU in April 2019.
The Blue sUAS drone development effort was organised in response to increased government-wide demand for secure and ultraportable drones that could be used for a variety of military and federal applications.
Parrot is currently one of two finalists of the SRR project, with delivery of a production-ready SRR drone scheduled by the end of 2020.
Parrot’s work for the SRR project confirmed to the DIU that the company is capable of meeting the outstanding and proven security, performance, scalability and ease-of-use requirements in its initial solutions designed for the US Army.
Following the initial phases of the SRR programme, the DIU launched the Blue sUAS effort to address high demand for trusted, secure, ultraportable, rapidly deployable, inexpensive and US-manufactured drones for deployment in US military, federal agencies and government operations.
Both the SRR and Blue sUAS programmes comply with Section 848 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, which prohibits operating or procuring unmanned aircraft systems manufactured in China.
Parrot has been selected once more by the DIU as one of the five participants in the Blue sUAS programme. At this virtual event, Parrot revealed two new high-performance tactical reconnaissance drones: ANAFI USA MIL for military forces, and ANAFI USA GOV for government and federal agencies.
The proven ANAFI platform has evolved through two years of extensive continuous development, improvement, and real-world use in the field.
The dedicated and approved systems built for military, government and federal agencies.
ANAFI USA MIL and ANAFI USA GOV are the result of Parrot’s work over the past 18 months for the SRR and Blue sUAS programmes. Both drones offer a powerful stabilized 32x zoom, FLIR thermal imaging, 4K HDR video, and exceptional data encryption and privacy features.
Easy to fly, fast to deploy, and offering impossibly quiet operations, both drones offer core features complementary to those of Parrot’s ANAFI USA drone.
