General Atomics, the folks who build the Predator, one of this century's gleaming aviation success stories, and Lockheed Martin have teamed to jointly pursue the U.S. Navy Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) program.  BAMS UAV is a $2 billion 'opportunity' to provide the U.S. Navy with a persistent Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capability.

The BAMS UAV program will expand the U.S. Navy’s capability to conduct broad area maritime surveillance and complement the transition from the Navy’s current P-3 system (bottom) to the next generation Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA). Lockheed Martin’s integrated avionics mission system expertise, along with unmanned aircraft such as GA-ASI’s Predator B – Extended Range (right), provides a low-risk solution to meet the Navy’s operational requirements for persistent ISR missions, passing real-time information to a variety of networked littoral and battle group assets within the maritime infrastructure.

"Our two companies bring together complementary capabilities to provide a low-risk and highly reliable systems solution to the U.S. Navy’s maritime surveillance needs," said Jennifer E. Smith, vice president, Business Development of the Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors Tactical Systems line of business. "The Lockheed Martin/GA-ASI team’s BAMS UAV solution will extend the war fighter’s ability to sense and counter enemy positions over vast areas around the world."

Thomas J. Cassidy, Jr., president and chief executive officer of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., added, "The U.S. Navy deserves the type of performance provided by the Predator B to dramatically extend the capabilities of their maritime patrol aircraft fleet in order to meet its future network-centric war fighting capabilities.  Predator B – Extended Range, based on the combat-proven Predator system, offers the lowest possible risk to the U.S. Navy at a fraction of the cost of competing systems.  Working with Lockheed Martin, our team will provide the best possible solution, meeting the Navy’s highest expectations."

An award for the engineering manufacturing demonstration phase award is slated for June 2004.

FMI: www.lockheedmartin.com; www.gat.com