General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) has announced the expansion of Team Reaper Australia with the inclusion of Sentient Vision Systems.
Sentient Vision is the only Australian provider of ISR that has been an integral part of every Australian UAS program to date. The inclusion of Sentient Vision brings Team Reaper's numbers to ten Australian companies providing a range of sensor, communication, manufacturing and life-cycle support capabilities.
"General Atomics recognizes the importance of having a robust team of Australian industry partners to support the Air 7003 requirements," Linden Blue, CEO of GA-ASI, said. "We continue to be committed to partnerships with Australian industry and to providing a capable, affordable RPA system to the ADF."
"Sentient is proud of our close collaboration with the Australian Government," Simon Olsen of Sentient Vision Systems said. "From our foundations of the Defence Science and Technology Group’s capability and technology demonstrator program, to our proud history of deployments in support of the Australian warfighter, Sentient sees the inclusion of our ViDAR wide area motion imagery payload as a part of Team Reaper Australia in support of the Air 7003 requirement as a reinforcement of Australian leadership in advanced autonomy."
Team Reaper originally consisted of Cobham, CAE Australia, Raytheon, and Flight Data Systems, and was first announced at the Avalon 2017.
The group has since expanded to ten companies, and now includes Cobham, CAE, Raytheon, Flight Data Systems, TAE Aerospace, Rockwell Collins, Ultra Electronics, Airspeed, Quickstep and Sentient Vision Systems.
Other contendors for Air 7003 include IAI's Heron TP UAS. The RAAF operated the Heron 1 in Afghanistan before retiring the platform in 2017.