Drone manufacturers hoping to have their wares certified that they meet cybersecurity and non-Chinese supply chain requirements will be able to fund and use third party assessors, a move aimed at speeding up process for getting small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) onto the Blue UAS List, the Defense Department’s lead commercial innovation unit said last Friday.
The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) in June expects to issue a solicitation for companies that want to become third-party assessor to “expand the number of drones to be available for operator testing by simplifying the Exception to Policy process, and provide data to be used by Services for potential authority to operate (ATO). Drones and their manufacturers need the ATO to make it onto the Blue UAS List for two years.
The upcoming competition for industry-led assessments will result in a “select number of capable entities” whose reviews will be evaluated by DIU to certify compliance with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and cybersecurity requirements, DIU said.
Congressional and industry officials have been dissatisfied with the speed of DIU’s current internal processes for verifying NDAA and cybersecurity compliance of small UAS. Doug Beck, the unit’s director, in late April provided an outline of the changes coming to the Blue UAS List (Defense Daily, May 2).
“DIU is evolving Blue UAS to match the pace of change and growing variety and scale of capabilities that the commercial sector brings to unmanned systems, leveraging key authorities and budget to put the best NDAA compliant platforms in the hands of our warfighter,” Beck said Friday in a statement.
DIU is also creating a two-tiered list of approved drones, one will be the Cleared List, which is where the third-party assessments will help.
AUVSI, an association that lobbies on behalf of the drone industry, already conducts compliance reviews in line with DIU’s processes. DIU said it will leverage the AUVSI Green UAS program for the Cleared List.
A new top-tier, the Select List, will include drones that are sponsored by a DoD entity or have been selected through a competition, and receive an ATO from DIU.
Drones that are already on the Blue UAS List will populate the Select List. Some of these include Anduril Industries’ Ghost and Ghost X UAS, Neros Technologies’ Archer first person view drone, a half-dozen Skydio UAS variants, and PDW’s C100.
Following flight demonstrations last fall, evaluators from the services selected 23 drone platforms that DIU has been putting through penetration testing and NDAA compliance review. Those that pass muster will receive ATOs and be added to the Select List.
Shield AI’s V-BAT Group 3 UAS was one of these selected for compliance reviews, as was Hoverfly’s Spectre drone, Zone 5 Technologies’ Paladin, Teledyne Flir’s [FLIR] palm-size Black Hornet, and others (Defense Daily, Feb. 18). The Paladin and Spectre have already cleared the assessment and will be added to the Select List.
DIU on Friday also teased a new government funded effort aimed at fostering closer collaboration between drone manufacturers and their potential military customers. The Project GI Challenge will be launched in early June and will provide competitive opportunities for selected vendors to demonstrate their UAS with interested customers, who will provide feedback, allowing the manufacturers to iterate and tweak their designs based on customer needs and at government expense, with the ultimate goal being to relatively quickly result in purchases and increased production.
DIU also maintains the Blue UAS Framework, which is an approved list of software and components that meet the cybersecurity and NDAA requirements. DIU said it has begun using commercial best practices to continuously monitor software to quickly approve any updates for inclusion on the framework.
“These automated tools to scan code allow us to deliver updated capabilities to the warfighter in 24 to 96 hours, as compared to 12 to 18 months for traditional programs, and generate better results as well,” David Michelson, DIU’s autonomy portfolio director, said in a statement.