AAI Corp. won a services contract to provide unmanned aerial vehicle-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) for U.S. Special Operations Command, defeating incumbent Insitu.
The Pentagon announced the $600 million services award this week that calls on AAI, a subsidiary of Textron Systems [TXT], to furnish and operate the UAVs under the Mid-Endurance Unmanned Aircraft System II program.
Boeing [BA]-owned Insitu has been providing the services with its ScanEagle platform.
The announcement came one week after the Navy awarded contracts to AAI, Insitu and Computer Sciences Corp. [CSC] to provide ISR services. That award was for a combined $874 million.
The unmanned systems participating in that contract are Insitu’s ScanEagle, AAI’s Aerosonde and the T-20 offered by CSC’s partnering firm Arcturas.