POGO: Mark Thompson, "Just the (one-way) ticket!" (10/9/24.))
Just the (one-way) ticket!
The Defense Department is seeking a new fleet of drones that breaks so many Pentagon practices that it just might work. It wants the drones for a variety of missions, inspired by the utility such aircraft have demonstrated in the wars now roiling Ukraine and the Middle East. “Recent conflicts have highlighted the asymmetric impact low-cost, one-way unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have on the modern battlefield,” the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) says. “The Department of Defense (DoD) must be able to employ low-cost precision effects at extended ranges.”
The drones must be “reliable, affordable, and adaptable,” which are foreign concepts inside the Pentagon (that’s probably why the DIU issued the solicitation instead of one of the military services). The commercially derived drones should be able to fly at least 31 miles, but ideally 186. They should carry a variety of payloads, most likely weapons and sensors, weighing at least 22 pounds (preferably 55 or more). Plus, they have to be capable of operating in “disrupted, disconnected, intermittent, low-bandwidth” environments (like your cell phone with zero bars!). And it wants them fast — proposals from interested suppliers are due before next Tuesday, October 15.
If the Pentagon thinks it has a winner, it may soon issue a drone production contract without additional competition “for use by one or more organizations in the Department of Defense.” The solicitation contained no cost goals beyond “affordable,” or how many it might buy. But it did specify one target: “We strongly recommend all proposals be formatted as presentations no more than 12 slides in length.”
That all but rules out traditional defense contractors.