2 août 2018 | International, C4ISR
US Army increases investment on counter-drone program
By: Daniel Cebul WASHINGTON — Leonardo DRS has received an additional $13 million to continue engineering and testing a vehicle-mounted system that the U.S. Army hopes will protect soldiers from small drones, according to a July 31 Defense Department statement. Leonardo was awarded an initial $16 million contract by the Army in July 2017 to develop a counter-UAV capability dubbed the Mobile Low, Slow Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Integrated Defense System, or MLIDS, with hopes of deploying “numerous production systems in early summer 2018." At the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference in October, the company announced it had received a $42 million production contract for an undisclosed number of MLIDS to fit the Army's requirement to defeat small, inexpensive unmanned systems such as quadcopters and fixed-wing aircraft that operate as airborne improvised explosive devices. “Drones are becoming an increasingly dangerous threat against our forward-deployed soldiers, and we are proud to support this urgent requirement to protect them from potentially lethal small unmanned aerial vehicles,” Aaron Hankins, vice president and general manager for DRS Land Systems, said in October 2017. “We are working hard to deliver the best capability to our soldiers as quickly as possible." Full article: https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2018/08/01/us-army-increases-investment-on-counter-drone-matv-program/