senseFly named to Blue sUAS 2.0 list of drone suppliers by the US Defense Innovation Unit

AgEagle Aerial Systems Inc., an industry-leading provider of full-stack drone, sensor and software solutions, has announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, senseFly, has been named to the Blue sUAS 2.0 list, published by the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) earlier this month.

The Blue sUAS 2.0 project follows the successful partnership between the U.S. Army and DIU on the Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) program for small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS), which started in 2019. DIU’s Blue sUAS project, now referred to as ‘1.0,’ followed the SRR program in August 2020 and made minor modifications to five final SRR candidate air vehicles and built integrated commercially-based ground control stations to create a standalone commercial/enterprise configuration available to the Department of Defense (DoD), as well as other US government entities.

The 2.0 project was subsequently created to increase the diversity, capability and affordability of UAS on DIU’s “Blue UAS Cleared List,” bringing a greater variety of UAS with a wide range of modalities, capabilities and price points. A secondary part of the project involves: 1) an effort to define a common standard across the DoD for UAS vendor onboarding; 2) the means to communicate that standard; and 3) a uniform process to assist authorized vendors in the procurement process. In March 2021, DIU sought proposals from UAS vendors and in the brief period the Request for Prototype Proposals was listed on its website, www.sam.gov, DIU received more than 100 responses. From this group, senseFly, along with ten other companies, were selected to participate in the Blue sUAS 2.0 program to prototype a new approval process, significantly increasing the variety of UAS capabilities available to all branches of the U.S. military.

As part of the Blue sUAS 2.0 registration and qualification process, senseFly has completed two demonstrations for U.S. government officials of its highly ruggedized eBee TAC UAV, a hand-launched fixed wing tactical mapping drone solution that enables users in disconnected environments to execute complex mapping and scouting missions safely and efficiently. Weighing only 3.5 pounds, eBee TAC features a digital camouflage skin for increased stealth and can be rapidly deployed, from assembly to hand-launch, in three minutes by a single user.

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