The U.S. Depart­ment of Defense is get­ting rid of Chi­nese-man­u­fac­tured drones over cyber­se­cu­ri­ty concerns.

The U.S. Pacif­ic Com­mand announced on Thurs­day that the Defense Depart­ment and the entire fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will have access to secure, trust­ed, and Amer­i­can-made com­mer­cial drones on the Gen­er­al Ser­vice Admin­is­tra­tion schedule.

This new DIU ini­tia­tive, dubbed Blue small unmanned air­craft sys­tems (sUAS), is the cul­mi­na­tion of 18 months of work by the Army and DIU to tai­lor the best tech­nol­o­gy from U.S. and allied com­pa­nies to devel­op small unmanned air­craft sys­tems that can be safe­ly adopt­ed by men and women in uni­form, Act­ing Under­sec­re­tary of Defense for Research and Engi­neer­ing Michael Krat­sios announced at a vir­tu­al event host­ed by the Defense Inno­va­tion Unit (DIU).

Dur­ing the Aug. 18 DIU event, Krat­sios said it also has impor­tant impacts for the nation’s broad­er eco­nom­ic and nation­al security.

“UAS tech­nolo­gies have incred­i­ble promise and poten­tial to not only pro­vide great eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit for the Amer­i­can peo­ple, but also to enhance safe­ty and secu­ri­ty for our nation. We need a strong, secure domes­tic UAS man­u­fac­tur­ing base to ensure Amer­i­can lead­er­ship in this crit­i­cal field,” he said. “Blue sUAS rep­re­sents a tremen­dous first step toward build­ing a robust and trust­ed UAS domes­tic indus­tri­al base that ensures sus­tained deliv­ery of high­ly-capa­ble, secure UAS to the warfight­ers that depend on it.”

DOD rec­og­nizes the grow­ing val­ue and capa­bil­i­ties of sUAS, from pro­vid­ing on-demand intel­li­gence and recon­nais­sance capa­bil­i­ties in con­test­ed bat­tle spaces, to rou­tine mon­i­tor­ing of crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, to trans­port­ing prod­ucts, he said. How­ev­er, until now, the Depart­ment was not able to adopt these sys­tems safe­ly due to secu­ri­ty and sup­ply chain con­cerns posed by Chi­nese-made sUAS, he added.

Through the work of Blue sUAS, five U.S.-manufactured drone con­fig­u­ra­tions will be made avail­able to pro­vide trust­ed and secure sUAS options to the mil­i­tary and U.S. government.

Blue sUAS also show­cas­es how DOD part­ners with indus­try and allies to quick­ly pilot and scale cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies across the joint force and the oth­er fed­er­al agencies.

Haven Wynne, Gen­er­al Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion sup­ply chain man­age­ment branch chief and pro­gram man­ag­er, said GSA is draw­ing up a 20-year con­tract, to include five-year options. He not­ed that the con­tract allows for the growth of addi­tion­al acces­sories to be added to the plat­forms at a lat­er time if required.

“Blue sUAS is a great exam­ple of DOD acqui­si­tion reform by low­er­ing the bar­ri­er to entry for non­tra­di­tion­al com­pa­nies to rapid­ly iter­ate shoul­der to shoul­der with warfight­ers to deliv­er high­ly capa­ble sUAS tai­lored to mis­sion needs,” Ellen M. Lord, under­sec­re­tary of defense for acqui­si­tion and sus­tain­ment, said at DIU’s vir­tu­al event.

Chris O’Donnell, deputy assis­tant sec­re­tary of defense for acqui­si­tion and sus­tain­ment, plat­form and weapon port­fo­lio man­ag­er, said that warfight­er expe­ri­ences in Iraq and Afghanistan demon­strat­ed the impor­tance of small UASs to warfight­ers on the battlefield.

DOD award­ed $13.4 mil­lion to five com­pa­nies to begin pro­duc­ing sUASs begin­ning next month: Van­tage Robot­ics, Sky­dio, Par­rot, Teal and Altavian.

Accord­ing to DIU’s web­site, the sUASs will have a range of at least 3 kilo­me­ters, 30 min­utes or more fly­ing time, the abil­i­ty to fly through rain and dust, assem­bly time of two min­utes or less, a weight of under 3 pounds on take­off, high-res­o­lu­tion day and night optics, ther­mal imag­ing, open source pro­to­col archi­tec­ture, and sim­ple inte­gra­tion with ground controllers.

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