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A Black Widow UAV, made by US firm Teal Drones which was acquired by Red Cat in 2021. (Teal Drones)
A new first-person view (FPV) unmanned aircraft system (UAS) currently being staffed through the requirements process is on track to be fielded to the US Army's Transformation in Contact (TIC) units as early as the end of 2025, a capabilities development official told Janes on 22 January.
If approved by the army's chief of staff, Purpose Built Attritable System (PBAS) will make it into the hands of warfighters by 2026 after going through the acquisition process in Program Executive Office Aviation, said Lieutenant Colonel Michael Brabner, air branch chief for the Robotics Requirements Division at the Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate. The systems could move through that process to get to the army's experimental TIC units as early as the fourth quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2025 or first quarter of FY 2026.
Two lethality capabilities that are in development with the Joint Program Executive Officer for Armaments and Ammunition (JPEO A&A) will be compatible with PBAS and will enable the FPV system to drop grenades and anti-personnel mines on adversaries. The army envisions this new equipment – modelled after the UAS wreaking havoc in Ukraine – as an “apex predator system”, Lt Col Brabner told Janes in an interview on 23 January.
Armament UAS-Delivered Immediate Battlefield Lethal Effects (AUDIBLE) is the army's first lethal modular mission payload for small UASs, Lt Col Brabner explained. PBAS will be able to carry AUDIBLE via the common lethality integration kit (CLIK), which is a government-developed tech data package that is the hardware and software “connective tissue between the thing that goes bang and the programme of record drone”, he added.
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