Insitu lands $41M Navy drone order

Insitu, the Bingen-based manufacturer of drones, has landed a $41.07 million Navy contract to supply three RQ-21A Blackjack unmanned aircraft systems.

The company, a subsidiary of aerospace giant Boeing, will perform the contract work in Bingen and is expected to complete it in January 2016, the U.S. Department of Defense said Thursday.

The $41.07 million will pay for “the air vehicles, ground control stations, launch and recovery equipment, initial spares, and system engineering and program management,” according to the Defense Department. Following federal acquisition rules, the contract wasn’t competitively bid, the Defense Department said.

In June, Flightglobal, an online news and information outlet focused on the aviation and aerospace industries, described the Blackjack as the successor of Insitu’s ScanEagle system.

The Navy contract marks the latest development in the growth of Insitu, which was launched in 1994 by garage inventors Tad McGeer and Andy von Flotow. In October, the company introduced what it called a new generation of unmanned aircraft, the ScanEagle2, during the Euronaval Exhibition and Conference in Paris.

In July 2013, The Columbian reported the company had $400 million in annual revenue and 800 workers. It was purchased by Boeing in 2008. Insitu’s unmanned aircraft are used for commercial, civil and defense applications worldwide.

Its unmanned aircraft systems have logged more than 800,000 operational flight hours and 100,000 sorties, according to the company.