New Quadcopter Drone ‘Kargo’ in Development, Hopes to Supply Marines

Kaman’s new “Kargo” drone hopes to provide US Marines with a medium-size supply capability. (Credit: Kaman Corp.)

WASHINGTON: Kaman Corp. this week unveiled its design for a new unmanned quadcopter, dubbed Kargo, aimed at giving the Marine Corps a medium cargo lift capability for the service’s Expeditionary Advanced Basing Operations concept.

The drone, which the company says will be able to carry around 800 pounds and travel more than 500 nautical miles one way, has been in development for the past six months. Kaman executives told a group of reporters today they have been operating a 50% scale model for testing purposes and plan to build and demonstrate a representative aircraft by the end of next year.

The new drone is geared toward a Marines program called unmanned logistics systems — airborne, which will develop a family of logistics aircraft in small, medium and large sizes. Kaman’s new vehicle fits in the medium-size aircraft category, or group 3. (The military characterizes aircraft in groups with group 1 being small scale drones carried and deployed by individual Marines, while a group 5 aircraft are similar in size to the Navy’s surveillance aircraft, MQ-4 Triton.)

Historically, the Marine Corps has operated on a tighter budget compared to the Navy, Army and Air Force. The service’s most senior leadership, including Commandant Gen. David Berger, have publicly acknowledged that is unlikely to change in the near term. Asked about what Kaman has done to make their new UAV affordable for their primary customer, Romin Dasmalchi, senior director of business development, said Kaman is using commercial-off-the-shelf technology and minimizing the number of unique parts.

“[Y]ou also think about, how are you going to sustain this capability in the field?” he said, citing shipping the vehicle to theater as one example. “Rotor blade boxes, they’re quite unique. They’re large, they’re really hard to move around and distribute in a place like INDOPACOM. There will be no boxes like that with Kargo. Everything comes in a standard size.”

The company is partnering with Near Earth Autonomy which will provide “precision landing, sense and avoid, and navigation in a GPS-denied environment,” according to a Kaman company statement.

Kaman is best known for its cargo helicopters used throughout the United States’ war in Afghanistan.