Navy awards Boeing Insitu $390 million contract for RQ-21A

The Navy last week announced a $390 million contract award to Boeing Insitu for the RQ-21A Blackjack unmanned air vehicle.

The award is for as many as 63 RQ-21A Navy and Marine Corps "attrition air vehicles," in addition to system and vehicle sales to Canada, Poland and Oman.

"[T]his contract provides for up to six RQ-21A unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and up to 17 RQ-21A air vehicles for foreign military sales (FMS) customers, including the governments of Canada, Poland and Oman. The contractor will also provide up to 93 ScanEagle UASs in various configurations," the announcement reads.

"In addition, this contract provides for associated services, including training, test and engineering, development of engineering change proposals, operations support, organizational level maintenance, field service representatives, land and ship surveys, hardware site activations, hardware installs, repairs and data," it continues.

The Navy's fiscal year 2020 budget documents note the Marine Corps is not currently scheduled to purchase additional RQ-21 systems, but will buy air vehicles that are part of the Blackjack system.

The service sought $66 million in FY-20 procurement funding for the RQ-21. House and Senate authorizers in their individual policy bills met this request.

The upper chamber passed its defense policy bill last week, while the House is slated to vote on its legislation later this month.