AeroVironment Seeks To Grow 'Switchblade' Missile Business
The supplier of small unmanned aircraft systems to the U.S. military is developing new variants of its Switchblade expendable flying missile.
AeroVironment displayed Switchblade and its launcher at the Unmanned Systems conference in Atlanta this week. (Photo: Bill Carey)

The manufacturer that has supplied most of the small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) the U.S. military uses also has a tactical missile systems business. AeroVironment’s Switchblade is an expendable, “backpackable” UAS with an explosive warhead that can be flown into targets. It can be configured for other missions and scaled to larger sizes, attributes AeroVironment hopes to exploit to build the business.


AeroVironment, which is based in Monrovia, Calif., already supplies more than 80 percent of the U.S. Department of Defense unmanned aircraft fleet numerically in the form of hand-launched Raven, Puma and Wasp air vehicles that readily provide troops with the capability of mobile, low-altitude intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. In Fiscal Year 2014, the manufacturer also received $44 million in Switchblade orders from the Army, the only service that has acknowledged flying the missile in combat, most recently in Afghanistan.


“It’s in the field,” said Steven Gitlin, AeroVironment vice president for marketing strategy and communications. “It’s been proving itself as an exceptionally valuable and capable solution that’s really helping to address a number of problems that our forces face in the field. Number 1 [are] the hit-and-run types of attacks that the enemy has been engaged in. This allows our forces to respond very quickly with a high level of precision to those attacks and to be able to identify the people who perpetrated them in many cases.”


Switchblade is about two feet long, weighs six pounds and is driven by an electric motor. It deploys from a tube resembling a mortar launcher. After launch, its wings pop open and its propeller engages to begin a flight. During an interview at the Unmanned Systems conference in Atlanta this week, Gitlin wouldn’t specify the aircraft’s range, saying only that it falls within five to 15 km. Nor would he describe the vehicle’s high-explosive warhead, which is supplied by ATK.


Though expendable, the aircraft also streams video and GPS coordinates to its operator, who controls it with a modified version of the same ground control station (GCS) used to operate the Raven, Puma and Wasp. The operator designates a target using the GCS. “Even after they designate it, and the Switchblade is in terminal guidance mode, they can still disengage the vehicle if they identify a civilian in harm’s way,” Gitlin said. The aircraft continues flying and can re-engage a target when the situation changes.


As AeroVironment demonstrated Switchblade in this “dismounted infantry” configuration, other services asked the company if the aircraft could be adapted for other missions. “While we were focusing on addressing the dismounted infantry use case, we’ve now gone back to a number of those other customers and have engaged with them to develop those variants,” Gitlin said. The Marine Corps recently launched Switchblade from the back of a V-22 Osprey at its air ground combat center in Twentynine Palms, Calif. The Navy has test launched Switchblade from a submarine at periscope depth against surface targets.


In its fiscal year that ended on April 30, AeroVironment invested in developing other Switchblade variants and in addressing capabilities the Army seeks for its coming Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System (LMAMS) requirement. AeroVironment is among companies including Textron and Lockheed Martin that are vying for the LMAMS requirement, which could lead to a selection in FY2017, Gitlin said.


“We think that as we look at the various use cases, we see a very significant market opportunity [for Switchblade] across those different applications,” he said. “We’re running as fast as we can to deliver the best capability to the customer and to position ourselves to secure the LMAMS program when it’s defined.”