The Department of Defense’s innovation arm and acquisition office have updated DOD’s cleared list of small unmanned aircraft systems under the second iteration of the Blue sUAS project with the addition of drones from Skydio and Flightwave, bringing the number of vendors offering compliant drones to 10.
The updated list now includes Skydio’s X2D and Flightwave’s Edge 130 drones, the Defense Innovation Unit said Thursday.
The list enables the Pentagon and federal partners to procure or operate cleared sUAS for infrastructure inspection, reconnaissance work and other missions even without securing a DOD exception since these drones have undergone an NDAA compliance check and cybersecurity assessment.
In October 2022, DIU unveiled a list of authorized drones from eight companies: Freefly Systems, senseFly, Harris Aerial, Inspired Flight, BlueHalo, Easy Aerial, Ascent AeroSystems and Wingtra.
In October 2021, DIU signed agreements with 11 nontraditional contractors to take part in a pilot program that seeks to prototype an approval process to facilitate the onboarding of small drones while expanding the availability of new capabilities to all service branches.
The Pentagon’s innovation unit approved sUAS from five vendors as part of the Blue sUAS 1.0 initiative in August 2020.
