Air Warfare

New MQ-1C Gray Eagle prototype to be tested in Europe, General Atomics exec says

“We'll be demonstrating this capability overseas,” David Alexander told Breaking Defense, adding that the demos could take place in Europe as early as “next month.”

By Valerie Insinna on October 13, 2022 12:16 pm
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A rendering of the Gray Eagle 25M. (General Atomics)

WASHINGTON —  A prototype of the latest version of the MQ-1C Gray Eagle will be headed to Europe soon for a series of demonstrations, according to the head of General Atomics’ aeronautics division.

General Atomics revealed its new “Gray Eagle 25M” variant — which adds an open mission system architecture, upgraded sensors and new comms links — on Monday during the Association of the US Army’s annual conference.

But while the first production aircraft will start flight tests in March 2023, the company doesn’t want to wait to see how the new configuration performs in operations and will send two prototype versions to US European Command next spring, Dave Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, told Breaking Defense on Monday.

“We’ll be demonstrating this capability overseas,” he said, adding that the demos will take place in March through May. Alexander declined to comment on the exact location of the tests and what US services — or international partners — could be taking part in the event.

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The Gray Eagle 25M will feature new communications links, including over-the-horizon Ku and Ka-band satellite communications, Link 16, and software-defined ultra-high frequency and very high frequency communication links, according to a company brochure. It will carry the Eagle Eye radar for surveillance of moving targets on land or in the water, but can also be equipped with other sensors due to the open mission system architecture.

The new variant also includes the new 200 horsepower Heavy Fuel Engine 2.0 created by General Atomics, which brings about a 50% improvement in electrical power, Alexander said.

For the exercise, General Atomics is modifying two government-owned Gray Eagle ER drones with the Eagle Eye radar “so you can practice the concept of operations, build tactics and procedures and see how to use it,” Alexander said. However, those aircraft won’t have the full upgrade package associated with the 25M, including the new engine.

In the past, the Army has used Gray Eagle for armed overwatch, providing surveillance over troops on the ground and striking adversary forces. However, the improved communications capability of the 25M variant would allow it to operate forward, looking for enemy air defenses or weapon systems and relaying information back so that precision fires can take out targets, Alexander said.

The fabrication of the first production Gray Eagle 25M — which will be equipped with the HFE 2.0 and all of the other upgrades — is currently wrapping up, with check out and ground taxi tests likely to occur in “about six weeks,” Alexander said. The first two 25M variants will be used for flight qualification, with flight tests beginning in March.

Following that testing, General Atomics plans to start work on another six 25M drones for the US Army, which will begin delivering at the end of fiscal 2025. Those aircraft are not yet under contract, but will likely be paid for using the $123 million that Congress added to Army Gray Eagle procurement in FY22, said General Atomics spokesman C. Mark Brinkley.

“Following that, we’d like to get into rate production of at least 12 per year,” but that will depend on the Army’s modernization plans for its legacy Gray Eagle fleet, Alexander said.

AUSA 2022

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AUSA 2022

Over at Rheinmetall's booth sat the hefty Lynx OMFV (Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle). The company, as its competitors, is hoping to make a strong impression as the Army looks for OMFV proposals later this fall -- the early stage of an almost certainly lucrative long-term contract award. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
All the way from down under, the Australian firm Defendtex presented some of its modular UAVs. Here visitors can see the Drone155, which the company says can be outfitted with ISR payloads or explosives. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
The MVPP from Globe Tech stands for Modular Vehicle Protection Platform, a vehicle add-on that can take the brunt of improvised explosive device detonations. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
AUSA was well attended by international officers and officials as well, and by foreign defense firms. The Korean booth, shown here, featured some products hoping to make a splash in the US military. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
Not your traditional defense contractor, the computing giant IBM has a booth at AUSA showing off its flashy but functional quantum computer. The US government as a whole, and the Pentagon in particular, are heavily invested in the quantum computing race with the likes of China. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
Among the fleet of vehicles parked throughout the AUSA floor for display was the Flyer 72-U, made by General Dynamics. The company says the vehicle takes a "modular approach" so it can be configured for anything from "light strike assault" to rescue and evacuation. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
The stuff of counter-UAS nightmares, the Virginia-based BlueHalo firm makes drone swarms that use AI and machine learning to provide battlefield intelligence to soldiers. The Army's Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office awarded the company $14 million in February to develop the HIVE. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
It's a .50 caliber Gatling gun, one that Dillon Aero says can fire 1,500 shots per minute, or 25 rounds per second. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
For this year's show AM General rolled its own Humvee Saber, Blade Edition, onto the floor. The company claims "leap-ahead" technology for a light tactical vehicle. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
Patria, a defense firm owned jointly by Finland and Norway's Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, made it's way across the Atlantic for AUSA 2022, bringing along its AMV multi-role vehicle. The AMV was recently purchased by the dozens by Slovakia and its home country of Finland. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
At the Pratt Miller Defense booth, visitors will see a full-sized Expeditionary Modular Autonomous Vehicle (EMAV) is the "newest and perhaps most mobile and lethal" of the company's autonomous offerings. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
Marathon's Autonomous Robot Targets are exactly what that sounds like: shooting targets guided by computer code and designed to "look, move, and even behave like people," the company says. The robots were on the move on the AUSA floor -- though no shooting was allowed. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
The AUSA show floor offered a fresh look at a futuristic version of an old Army standby: the Abrams tank. This one, the Abrams X, is made by General Dynamics Land Systems, manufacturers of the current Abrams M1A1 and M1A2 battle tanks used by the US Army. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
Attendees may walk by model versions of the famous Iron Dome system, in use for years in Israel, and its sister SkyCeptor system, both made by Rafael. The SkyCeptor, in particular, is meant to "defeat short- to medium-range ballistic and cruise missiles and other advanced air defense threats," the company says. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
As the need for counter-UAS systems explodes, Epirus is at AUSA repping its counter-electronics system Stryker Leonidas, made with General Dynamics. The system's "counter-swarm" weapon "fills a pressing short range air defense (SHORAD) capability gap," the company says. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
A new unveiling for AUSA, Rheinmetall announced this week the Mission Master CXT platform, the newest addition to the company's "family" of autonomous ground vehicles. The company says the CXT "combines the power of a diesel engine with a silent electric motor." (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
The GMC Hummer EV Platform, the first vehicle on GM's New Ultium EV Platform, goes on display at AUSA 2022. All-electric offerings are the center of much of the Army's attention these days as it aims to electrify its non-tactical, and eventually tactical, fleet. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
Two new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicles (AMPV) sit at the booth by Bae Systems. The vehicles are meant to replace the Army's venerable, but old M113s. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
Palantir shows off its prototype for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) vehicle. The company says the TITAN "will be the critical backbone that provides correlation, fusion, and integration of sensor data alongside insights from AI/ML overlaid at the tactical edge." In other words, it's meant to find the signal in the noise. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
A model of a "modernized" Boeing Apache AH-64E shown Association of US Army Conference in 2022. While the Army is about to choose two new airframes, there's currently no Apache replacement on the horizon. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
Lockheed Martin teamed up with Sikorsky to produce the Raider X, the team's competitor in the Army's Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program, one of two high-profile Army Future Vertical Lift contests currently underway. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
The Bell 360 Invictus is the other FARA competitor, looking to beat out the Lockheed-Sikorsky team. The Army's expected to make its decision in fiscal 2024. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
The defense start-up Anduril has expanded its footprint in the defense market in recent years. This product, the Mobile Sentry, "brings autonomous fixed site counter UAS and counter intrusion capabilities into a mobile form factor," the company says. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
The military's no-so-furry friendly robot dogs are back at AUSA this year. This model, called the Vision 60 Q-UGV from Ghost Robotics, is an "all-weather ground robot for use in a broad range of unstructured urban and natural environments for defense, homeland and enterprise applications," the company says. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
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