The U.S. Army has tapped three companies – AASKI Technology, Leidos [LDOS] and Textron [TXT] AAI Corp. – to share in a five-year, $900 million contract to provide technical services and field support for tactical unmanned aircraft systems.
The three firms will compete for work under the contract. The Department of Defense, which announced the contract April 6, said the Army received a total of five bids. 
In an April 19 press release, Leidos said its work under the contract “will enable the U.S. Army to identify and rapidly integrate cutting-edge technologies and capabilities to deliver capability to U.S. armed forces and its allies, reduce command stress on U.S. armed forces by relieving them of several operational requirements, and decrease the number of military personnel the DoD must deploy and sustain overseas.”
In a statement, AASKI said it “will leverage its aviation intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) expertise, along with its professional services for planning, designing, implementing, securing, and managing highly complex, mission-critical networks and systems.”