Date: 19 November, 2007
Shadow 200 Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems (TUAS), designed and produced by AAI Corporation, surpassed 200,000 total flight hours in July 2007 - doubling the 100,000 flight hour milestone set in June 2006 in less than thirteen months.
This hours-of-operation milestone was reached in early July, during a sortie operated by a U.S. Army unit supporting ground operations in Iraq. More than 88% of the flight hours of Shadow 200 systems, which the U.S. Army designates as RQ-7B systems, have been in support of U.S. and allied operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Army selected AAI as its TUAS prime contractor in December 1999. To date, 74 complete systems have been ordered, including 296 aircraft and 148 ground control stations. Each system includes four aircraft, two ground control stations, and other components. AAI is a wholly owned subsidiary of United Industrial Corporation.
“The role of Shadow systems continues to grow as essential surveillance, reconnaissance, and intelligence-gathering assets supporting U.S. Army and National Guard units in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Steven E. Reid, AAI’s vice president of unmanned aircraft systems. In addition, the U.S. Marine Corps recently began transitioning to Shadow systems in support of its combat units. Since being deployed by the U.S. Army to Iraq at the outset of military operations in early 2003 and later to Afghanistan, Shadow systems have flown more than 37,000 sorties and more than 178,000 flight hours in combat operations.
Total flight operation hours include training flights and other deployments. In addition to the production and upgrade of Shadow systems, AAI provides performance-based logistics support and sustainment for fielded and deployed U.S. Army TUAS units. AAI also manufactures a number of other unmanned aircraft systems, and the company is recognized for its design and development of advanced ground control stations and interoperable network technologies.
A leading example is the One System® ground control station, designed and produced by AAI, which is compatible and interoperable with multiple unmanned aircraft systems, including Shadow, Pioneer, Hunter, Fire Scout, the Army’s new Extended Range/Multi-Purpose system and Aerosonde. AAI has also developed and fielded the One System™ Remote Video Terminal, a small, mobile, intelligence-gathering system capable of directly receiving and integrating live video and telemetry data from an array of manned and unmanned aircraft systems.