The U.S. Army has exercised the second option period of its other transaction agreements with Griffon Aerospace and Texton Systems (NYSE: TXT) to continue to evaluate and demonstrate their vertical takeoff and landing system offerings.
The contract covers the evaluation of the companies’ Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System designs leading to a critical design review to establish a final system design and initial product baseline, the Army said Tuesday.
According to the service branch, the FTUAS Option 2 contract award follows the completion of the first agreement option period wherein submissions were evaluated against performance, open system architecture, cost, schedule and risk requirements.
The period ended in a preliminary design review of weapon system designs from Griffon Aerospace, Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC), Sierra Nevada Corp. and Texton Systems.
In the third agreement option period, downselected systems will be subject to flight demonstrations and third-party modular open systems approach verifications before undergoing developmental testing and operational demonstrations.
