The Army is seeking industry’s information on potential offerings for “Purpose-Built Attritable Systems (PBAS),” detailing an interest in small, first person view (FPV) drones that are “production-ready.”
A new Sources Sought notice states the Army may invite industry for a follow-on PBAS demonstration to showcase solutions that are commercially available, reusable and that have “unretrievable components,” to include uncrewed aircraft platforms and payloads.
“FPV-enabled [small UAS] provide the maneuver force a low cost solution with increased maneuverability, precise lethal payload delivery and operator concealability,” the Army writes in the notice.
Potential PBAS solutions should be designed with baseline mission characteristics for “rapid reconfigurability and modular payload capabilities that allow for mission changes across target acquisition tasks, with the added flexibility to execute kinetic operations as needed,” according to the notice.
“The system’s mission characteristics include a field-level reconfigurable, modular payload capability to execute the primary mission of reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition, secondary mission of communications relay and [an] enhanced mission set of lethal payload delivery and electronic support,” according to the notice.
The Army notes that information collected in response to the new notice “may be used to fulfill future procurement requirements.”