Security

The Drone Gold Rush

With only a few large defense companies dominating the weapons market, unmanned aerial vehicles are looking like the one area where small, nimble companies can make serious inroads. Drone maker Insitu announced that it’s raised $25 million in new venture capital, and the money is going toward the Integrator, a new unmanned aerial vehicle the […]

With only a few large defense companies dominating the weapons market, unmanned aerial vehicles are looking like the one area where small, nimble companies can make serious inroads. Drone maker Insitu announced that it's raised $25 million in new venture capital, and the money is going toward the Integrator, a new unmanned aerial vehicle the company plans to launch next year.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports:

Integrator The 125-pound aircraft -- unlike the company's lighter, four-year-old ScanEagle -- includes a payload bay for carrying up to 45 pounds of scientific or communications equipment, said Chief Executive Steve Sliwa. For example, communications equipment could be placed in the payload bay during a natural disaster to create what Sliwa calls a "cell phone tower in the sky" for 24 hours.

*"There are a lot of scenarios where you would like to suddenly have people's phones or radios work," Sliwa said. Final pricing has not been set, though the aircraft will cost less than $500,000. Some customers have already lined up to buy the new aircraft, which is expected to debut late next year. *

Insitu has been expanding rapidly. It's produced almost 500 ScanEagle drones. As WRAL.com notes, small companies like Insitu have staked out a niche in the defense market normally dominated by the Lockheeds and Northrops.

Steve Sliwa, the CEO of Insitu, compares the current market to the dawn of aviation. “Back in the ’30s and ’40s, there were hundreds of companies making airplanes, but over the years that narrowed down to three or four,” he told us. “Now with unmanned, it’s been opened back up. It’s hard to imagine a Boeing or Northtrop Grumman developing something that costs a few hundred thousand dollars. It’s just not what they’re good at.”

As a result, smaller, more agile companies, that have far less funding to work with than aviation and defense giants like Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman, have the opening they need to develop multiple products each. Insitu, for example, has Integrator, Insight, GeoRanger and ScanEagle (the latter two co-developed with Fugro Airborne and Boeing, respectively).

Drone use has skyrocketed in Iraq, but even if that market has peaked, there's clearly a growing market for domestic law enforcement and border patrol.