Boeing has greatly expanded its toehold in the military and civil market for small, high-performance unmanned aerial systems with an agreement to acquire the Insitu Group.
Already long-time partners since successfully offering the ScanEagle UAS to US and foreign military customers, the Boeing/Insitu team had recently shown signs of fracturing in the pursuit of a follow-on contract for the US Marine Corps and US Navy.
But Insitu was driven back to Boeing after its venture capital investors decided the time was right to put the 14-year-old technology firm up for sale.
"To some extent it was Boeing or somebody else," says Vic Sweberg, Boeing director of advanced airborne anti-submarine warfare and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems.
Boeing acquires a company that expects to earn $150 million in 2008 sales, growing by 70% compared with last year. The Boeing/Insitu team operates scores of ScanEagles for the US Marine Corps, US Navy and Australian combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
ScanEagle's success has already prompted the USMC and USN to formally acquire a small tactical UAS (STUAS)/tier II fleet.
In early June, Insitu disclosed that it would break from Boeing and independently offer the larger and more capable Integrator UAS to win the contract. The acquisition puts Boeing back in the hunt for the competitive STUAS/tier II contract.
"Integrator is our platform that we're going to go forward with," said Al Jackson, Insitu's vice-president for sales and governmental relations.
Although the STUAS/tier II deal is a near-term focus, Boeing sees bright prospects in the civil market for Insitu's products. The Insight UAS, the civil version of ScanEagle, already operates in the commercial market for fisheries surveillance.
"Once we get the regulatory issues behind us the sky's the limit with regard to the civil market," Sweberg says.
Boeing expects Insitu to operate as an independent subsidiary within the Integrated Defense Systems division.
The Insitu deal follows Boeing's previous acquisition of Frontier Systems, the Irvine, California-based maker of the A160 Hummingbird and Maverick UAVs.
Source: Flight International
