“Piasecki Aircraft Acquires Kaman Air Vehicles’ KARGO UAV Program”

Piasec­ki Air­craft Corps announced this week, the acqui­si­tion of Kaman Air Vehi­cles’ KARGO UAV Pro­gram, expand­ing its port­fo­lio of ver­ti­cal lift and car­go craft, reports a press release.

The release explains, “KARGO UAV is a medi­um-lift, autonomous unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle that has been demon­strat­ed to both the U.S Marine Corps and U.S Army for its car­go VTOL capa­bil­i­ties, with suc­cess­ful autonomous lift and flight test­ing under mil­i­tary eval­u­a­tion pro­grams.” 

Designed for oper­a­tions in con­flict areas and remote envi­ron­ments, KARGO UAV has com­plet­ed ini­tial mil­i­tary con­tracts and is poised to dis­rupt both defence and com­mer­cial car­go trans­port.

It con­tin­ues, “KARGO UAV is a dual-use sys­tem built for agile logis­tics, whether in com­bat zones or remote com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. Engi­neered for ver­sa­til­i­ty, it fea­tures a com­pact foot­print, allow­ing for easy trans­port and rapid deploy­ment in aus­tere envi­ron­ments.”

Then release goes on, “KARGO UAV is opti­mised for autonomous oper­a­tions, util­is­ing advanced flight con­trols and mod­u­lar pay­load inte­gra­tion. The sys­tem is designed to meet the needs of the Depart­ment of Defence and com­mer­cial cus­tomers that demand afford­able and reli­able logis­tics sup­port.”

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The UAV recent­ly demon­strat­ed autonomous car­go lift for the U.S Army and com­plet­ed ful­ly autonomous flight test­ing using Near Earth Autonomy’s Pere­grine sys­tem. 

An ini­tial USD12 mil­lion was award­ed by the U.S Marine Corps for two full-scale pro­to­types of an Autonomous Resup­ply Vehi­cle, as part of the Expe­di­tionary Logis­tics Pro­gram (MARV-EL). Demand is pro­ject­ed to exceed 300 air­craft. 

John Piasec­ki, CEO of Piasec­ki Air­craft, com­ment­ed, “This acqui­si­tion is a per­fect fit for our long-term vision for a fam­i­ly of autonomous VTOL UAS craft to address a diverse range of cus­tomer mis­sion require­ments in both gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial mar­kets.”

He con­tin­ued, “Kaman’s KARGO UAV pro­gram has already achieved sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones and with our VTOL exper­tise, world-class Heli­plex and exten­sive indus­try part­ner­ships, we are posi­tioned to accel­er­ate KARGO’s tran­si­tion from pro­to­type to pro­duc­tion.” 

Piasec­ki aims to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment test­ing toward a pro­duc­tion vari­ant to meet grow­ing demand from both mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial cus­tomers.

The com­pa­ny is to acquire all intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and assets asso­ci­at­ed with the pro­gram and will relo­cate all R&D and oper­a­tional activ­i­ties to its state-of-the-art Heli­plex facil­i­ty in Coatesville, Penn­syl­va­nia.

Ross Seal­fon

Ross Seal­fon, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Kaman, added, “This was a strate­gic deci­sion to ensure that Kaman’s impres­sive UAV tech­nol­o­gy finds a home where it can thrive. Piasecki’s rep­u­ta­tion for inno­va­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion in ver­ti­cal flight solu­tions makes them the ide­al com­pa­ny to take KARGO UAV to mar­ket.”

Piasec­ki will be exhibit­ing at the 2025 Army Avi­a­tion Mis­sion Solu­tions Sum­mit (AAAA) in Nashville at Booth 2010 from May 14th to 16th.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://piasecki.com/

https://kaman.com/

(Images: Piasec­ki, Kaman)

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