GRAHAM WARWICK / WASHINGTON DC
Partnerships and acquisitions as well as in-house designs are expected to fuel growth
Boeing believes its fledgling Unmanned Systems unit can achieve $1 billion in annual revenues by the end of the decade. In addition to developing its own designs, the company plans to grow via partnerships and acquisitions among the many firms producing unmanned air vehicles (UAVs).
"The UAV market is going to grow, probably at double-digit rates, and conceivably could be $5-6 billion a year by 2010. It is not unreasonable that we can grow to $1 billion or more by the end of decade," says Mike Heinz, president of the unit, which was formed late last year.
Part of Boeing's Military Aircraft & Missile Systems sector, Unmanned Systems is focusing on three market segments, says Heinz: combat vehicles; strategic or long-endurance UAVs; and tactical UAVs. The company is developing the US Air Force's unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) and is bidding to develop the US Navy's UCAV-N and the US Army's unmanned combat armed rotorcraft.
In the strategic UAV field, Boeing is looking beyond the USAF's Northrop Grumman Global Hawk. Opportunities include a US Air Force Research Laboratory programme looking at a next-generation intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance UAV called SensorCraft, and a potential requirement for a stealthy long-endurance "son of DarkStar" (the cancelled Lockheed Martin/Boeing reconnaissance UAV programme).
Describing the tactical UAV market as "highly fragmented, with dozens of companies and products, many with long experience", Heinz says Boeing "does not intend to compete with them or re-invent the wheel. We will partner companies we think have products that best match the requirements. We will turn them from stovepipe products into integrated systems using our mission management and adaptive autonomous control technology." This will exploit Boeing's UCAV work, using the same algorithms and software, he says.
Partnerships and acquisitions will help accelerate Boeing's entry into the unmanned systems market. It has already signed a partnership agreement with Insitu to develop the SeaScan, a small long-endurance ship-launched UAV.
Boeing is looking for other ways to accelerate its market entry, including working to "create opportunities where we see the military or civil customers' needs are not well formulated", says Heinz.
Source: Flight International
