The U.S. Air Force has awarded General Atomics a potential five-year, $7.4B contract to deliver up to 36 units of the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle per year.
The Agile Reaper Enterprise Solution indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract includes pre-priced ground data terminal, mobile ground control stations, spares and related support equipment and is expected to reduce by about 35 percent the time it takes to bring the UAVs to operational units, the Air Force said Thursday.
The service branch and foreign military sales customers can place an order for four to up to 36 Reapers within a single year under the ARES contractâs pre-negotiated price quantity curve of $3.3B.
âPrior to ARES, the standard contract award timeline was roughly 380 days,â said Alicia Morales, aircraft production manager with the Medium Altitude Unmanned Aerial System program office. âNow, once we have a budget, and itâs in our account, we can award in just a couple of days and field the aircraft in 26 months.â
Morales also cited how ARES could help the Air Force handle unplanned requirements and demands from FMS partners.
âARES is a big deal because it answers the âmailâ as far as how do we deal with hard-to-predict demand signals from our international partners and enable increased responsiveness to U.S. Budget dynamics,â Morales added.
FMS clients can procure the Reaperâs NATO exportable version, Dash 21 variant, through the IDIQ contract.
