US Army identifies two finalists for unmanned aircraft portion of RS SKO competition

The US Army is down to two finalist platforms for the unmanned aircraft competition portion of its Render Safe Sets, Kits, and Outfits (RS SKO) programme.

The Teledyne FLIR Systems R80D SkyRaider and the InstantEye Robotics Mk-3 Gen4-HL Group 1 unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) are the finalists and the service is in source selection, an industry source told Janes on 26 May. The UAS competition is the ‘render safe’ part of RS SKO and is the only unmanned aircraft portion of the programme.

The Teledyne FLIR Systems R80D SkyRaider is one of the two finalists for the unmanned aircraft portion of the US Army’s Render Safe Sets, Kits, and Outfits (RS SKO) competition. (Teledyne FLIR Systems)

Barbara Gabbard, US Army joint program executive office armaments and ammunition director G3/5/7, told Janes on 13 May that InstantEye Robotics and the FLIR SkyRaider were the only two UAS platforms submitted to the US Army that could potentially meet the RS SKO requirements.

However, the service continues to conduct market research to ensure the best systems are selected to meet the RS SKO requirements, she added. The industry source said that this was the US Army’s way of saying that it was taking a wide look at the capability, and staying within Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs), even though these two UASs, at this point, were the only ones that would deliver the render-safe capability. Gabbard had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.