The Air Force is revving up plans to acquire more Reaper surveillance and attack drones faster with a decided effort to expedite the development and delivery process of up to as many as thirty-six new drones per year.
The refined acquisition plan, led by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s MQ-9 Program office, is expected to reduce the time it takes to deliver the aircraft to operational units by as much as 35-percent. The program is called Agile Enterprise Reaper Solution (ARES).
“Prior to ARES, the standard contract award timeline was roughly 380 days. Now we can award in just a couple of days and field the aircraft in 26 months” Alicia Morales, aircraft production manager with the Medium Altitude Unmanned Aerial Systems, said in an Air Force report.
Reapers are in such high demand due to what Air Force leaders describe as an “insatiable appetite for ISR,” yet in recent years the mission scope of the drone has been expanding substantially. The service has been incrementally adding more weapons to the platform, including more air-to-ground air-dropped bombs.
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