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Parrot and the U.S. Army, a New Day is Coming

Yea baby! Of course they are considered our allies.
Just stop throwing tomatoes!
 
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Ain’t gonna happen as long as we insist they pay their own way. That’s the problem with their governments, especially when they run out of other people to pay their freight.

You can only tax people and business a certain max amount before they move to somewhere else.
 
There are several companies in the mix but as of this moment I don’t know who the others are. I suspect Parrot gained inclusion due to their work with the European military groups and their apparent knack for miniaturization. The military loves man portable, tactical sneak a peek stuff.
 
The five other outfits are Skydio, Altavian, Teal Drones, Vantage Robotics, and Lumenier.
 
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I looked at Teal Drones website. Very amusing. They are stepping back from their consumer drone sector to concentrate on the government work.

Show of hands, who has ever heard of "Teal Drones" . Yeah, me neither, but they have parlayed an essentially non-existent drone business into a lucrative business. Ani't America Great??
 
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Interesting development. I would have thought 3DR might be in the mix.

100 million dollar company almost destroyed by inept management and marketing. Then DJI slit their throat. Now they’re in bed with DJI. I’d think the US military would have nothing to do with anyone connected in any way to DJI. 3DR has a pretty unimpressive track record. Perhaps, once a small field deployable hardware platform is selected they may consider software side controllers like SiteScan, but more likely will be proprietary, and likely classified to high levels.
 
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They have had several companies, all American, designing multirotors for them for several years but not on a large scale. Prior to about 2013 their focus was mostly small fixed wing and helis but portability was often a problem, as were landings that didn’t destroy the aircraft.

If anyone thinks multirotors are hard to land, you should have been there to watch how badly they can mangle a fixed wing landing. It got so bad they had someone design a small fixed wing the deliberately broke apart on landing in a manner that permitted easy reassembly.
 
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I just read that article today, They have a very special camera on board.
If i remember right the drone's camera can focus in on and identify what a person looks like from 4.5 miles away, flies for 40 minutes, and is nearly silent at 50 ft. It also has a thermal camera at the other end
 
They have had several companies, all American, designing multirotors for them for several years but not on a large scale. Prior to about 2013 their focus was mostly small fixed wing and helis but portability was often a problem, as were landings that didn’t destroy the aircraft.

If anyone thinks multirotors are hard to land, you should have been there to watch how badly they can mangle a fixed wing landing. It got so bad they had someone design a small fixed wing the deliberately broke apart on landing in a manner that permitted easy reassembly.

I've got a friend that works at AeroVironment. He tells some great stories of teaching military guys to fly. I imagine this is why many platforms use a net for aircraft recovery.
 
Yup, plus it’s pretty easy to run into a big net, which makes site operational foot prints a lot smaller.

During my run with the first system I deployed with I ended up repairing a lot of AeroVironment Ravens on the side while in theater. What those little things were subjected to was pretty hard to imagine. Fly aways had a different meaning back then. As some operators lacked flight skills they lost control of them constantly, so we would find Ravens all over the base after their practice sessions. The Puma operators were a lot better trained.
 

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