The Coast Guard on June 26 awarded Shield AI nearly $200 million to provide and operate the company’s V-BAT unmanned aircraft system for operations aboard some of the service’s cutters.
The $198.1 million contract has five one-year ordering periods that will require Shield AI to operate the Group 3 UAS at least 12 hours daily with the ability to provide services around-the-clock on a weekly basis. Initially, the V-BATs will be used aboard the Coast Guard’s 420-foot national security cutters (NSCs) and likely will also operate aboard the service’s medium-endurance offshore patrol cutters when they start going to sea.
The Coast Guard has been using ScanEagle UAS owned and operated by Boeing’s [BA] Insitu business aboard its NSCs. The Coast Guard is a new customer for Shield AI and V-BAT.
V-BAT, which takes-offs and lands vertically but typically flies like a fixed-wing aircraft, will carry electro-optical and infrared sensors, and communications relays to provide intelligence, surveillance, detection, classification, and identification for host cutter missions. The Coast Guard said that its requirements for the future Maritime UAS also include “fully automated flight operations.”
Shield AI, a startup, is one of the pioneering companies in using artificial intelligence to enable autonomous UAS operations, including to allow drones to fly in coordinated swarms.
The Marine Corps is another customer for V-BAT.