FORT HOOD, Texas — The U.S. Army is expected to decide in September whether to proceed to full-rate production on the AAI Shadow 200 Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV) system, which successfully completed a two-week Initial Operational Test & Evaluation (IOT&E) at Fort Hood in May.
Army officials chose AAI of Hunt Valley, Md. — a subsidiary of United Industrial Corp. — in late 1999 to provide brigade-level TUAV capabilities. The Army has announced plans to acquire 44 TUAV systems.
The TUAV flew 53 test missions, each averaging four hours. That effort followed successful fields tests in November and December 2001 by soldiers at Fort Hood, who evaluated system performance during round-the-clock Operational Tempo (OPTEMPO) demonstrations.
The November effort required the TUAV system to perform 74 hours of target surveillance during a 120-hour, five-day period.
