For Insitu and parent Boeing, operating experience is a distinct advantage as the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps make the long-awaited shift from buying services to procuring systems to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) for deployed forces.

Winner of the Small Tactical Unmanned Air System (STUAS) competition, Insitu’s Integrator will eventually replace the smaller ScanEagle, which Boeing and its subsidiary have operated for more than 350,000 hr. in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.

ISR services began as an experiment called Deep Blue—ScanEagle first deploying to Iraq with the Marine Corps in July 2004. From 17,000 hr. in 2005, usage has grown to 80,000-90,000 hr. a year, with the program now providing ISR services to the U.S. Army and Air Force as well as Marine Corps and Navy.

ISR services are funded through the Pentagon’s overseas contingency operations budget, with the Marine Corps as the largest customer. But ScanEagles also operate from Navy warships as well as Persian Gulf oil platforms. “At any given time we will have one or two ships deployed with ISR services,” says Capt. J.R. Brown, STUAS program manager.

Boeing/Insitu operates under an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract, with task orders awarded for geographic-, time- or service-specific ScanEagle ops. That contract is reaching its ceiling, and the Navy plans a competition for follow-on ISR services. A request for proposals (RFP) is expected by year-end, with contracts to be awarded by June 2011. There will be multiple awards prequalifying contractors to compete so that “each time we have a task order, we will have a mini-competition,” Brown says.

The Navy expects a “robust competition,” but bidders must have a system that is ready to deploy. “This is not a developmental ISR services effort. It’s COTS [commercial off-the-shelf], ready to go,” he says, adding that the requirements will be higher, based on ScanEagle experience. “The warfighter is saying ‘I need a little more technical capability’” in the electro-optical sensor, as well as the ability to carry more payloads.

“The key piece here is that ISR services is a gapfiller,” says Brown. “When we start to field STUAS, that will begin to replace ISR services.” The shift has been a long time coming. Many of the unmanned aircraft now in use circumvented the normal procurement hurdles. Not so STUAS, which has gone through a formal and lengthy process that began in January 2005, when the Marine Corps’ “urgent need” for a Tier-2 tactical UAS was validated.

Marine Corps and Navy requirements were merged in October 2006 to create the STUAS/Tier-2 program, but the final RFP was not released until April 2009. Mandatory flight demonstrations of the candidate systems took place in mid-2009, but it would be another year before a contract was awarded. Over that time, the initial operational capability slipped to late Fiscal 2013, from 2010.

Brown says the time was spent ensuring the competition was fair and open. “When we released the RFP, we did not provide a system specification—we released a performance-based specification because we wanted the offerors to bid back their COTS solution as the starting point.” As a result, “each proposal’s baseline was a different starting point,” and how far each bidder would have to develop its system to meet the STUAS key performance parameters was where the competition lay, he says.

Insitu’s proposal baseline was the commercial, “Block A,” Integrator already under development, and the company believes Navy-unique modifications required for the “Block B” STUAS version will be minimal. The commercial vehicle has an engine using heavy jet fuel, which was an objective requirement for STUAS, and the company will now find out whether that baseline engine meets the Navy’s specifications.