As the Pentagon relies more heavily on UAVs, UAV makers benefit

defense giant with Reaper aircraft for a Navy contract. Northrop Grumman Corp. won the bidding, however.

Northrop is an exception among major defense contractors developing UAVs, with its Global Hawk, a high-altitude aircraft with a wingspan as wide as that of a jetliner.

Boeing, in June, created an unmanned-airborne-systems division that includes Insitu, but the drone maker maintains a fair amount of independence. At a recent trade show in Washington, Insitu’s booth was separate from the Boeing area, and Insitu executives’ business cards do not feature Boeing logos.

General Atomics’ Reaper, which costs between $10 million and $12 million apiece, and the smaller Predator for now are tackling the U.S. government’s most sensitive missions.

Cole notes that armed UAVs have enabled the U.S. to conduct airstrikes against Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, some inside Pakistan, without endangering U.S. pilots. U.S. officials have said the leader of Pakistan’s Taliban was recently killed by one such strike. UAV attacks have been subject to Pakistani criticism, however, because of civilian casualties and alleged violations of sovereignty.

Gates and senior lawmakers — who say the Pentagon has moved too slowly in providing equipment and technological capabilities to troops in combat — have created well-funded initiatives to urgently field new systems such as UAVs.

The military’s most successful weapons in recent years, including the Global Hawk and the Predator, as well as a remote-controlled ground vehicle from iRobot Corp. called the PackBot, haven’t come out of the Pentagon’s traditional weapons-buying system, said Peter Singer, director of the twenty-first Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. The big players are “facing some major issues as homes of innovation,” he said.

In a corner of the defense industry populated with small firms, General Atomics stands out. Thomas Cassidy Jr., president of the General Atomics unit making Reapers, expects the Air Force to buy as many as 375 of the drones. The company developed the Reaper from its basic Predator model, itself a 1990s system bought by the military outside traditional weapons-procurement channels.

General Atomics, which is based in San Diego, also is at work on a faster, stealthy UAV that will avoid enemy radar in a way its predecessors can’t. “It can go where Reapers and Predators can’t go,” Cassidy said.

Insitu’s specialty, meanwhile, is surveillance. Its technology initially was used by commercial fisherman to track schools of tuna. After the 9/11 terror attacks, Insitu focused more on defense. The Marines took its systems to Iraq in 2004, where Insitu’s UAVs helped watch over U.S. forces fighting in Fallujah.

Insitu is working on a plane called the Integrator, which it hopes will win a Navy contract for surveillance aircraft. Bigger firms, among them Raytheon Co., are pursuing the contract.

The Integrator carries more electronics than its smaller predecessor, the Scan Eagle, which has notched some 200,000 flight hours, according to the company.