Army buys eBee VISION drones
EagleNXT sold nine eBee VISION ISR unmanned aerial system kits to the U.S. Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. The announcement underscores rising use of drone intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for training and perimeter recon — with potential applicability to private security perimeters. (x.com)
EagleNXT said on April 16 that it sold nine eBee VISION drone kits to the U.S. Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, the Army’s main desert combat-training site in California. (eaglenxt.com) The company said the kits will support training exercises, opposing-force missions and rotational units at Fort Irwin. EagleNXT also said the systems are among the first eBee VISION drones produced at its new facility in Allen, Texas. (eaglenxt.com) The eBee VISION is a small fixed-wing drone, meaning it flies more like a model airplane than a quadcopter. EagleNXT says one operator can carry it in a backpack, hand-launch it, and get it airborne in under three minutes. (eaglenxt.com, campaign.ageagle.com) EagleNXT lists the drone at about 4 pounds to 4.1 pounds, with a 46.4-inch wingspan, up to 90 minutes of flight time, and a live-video link out to 20 kilometers. The company says it carries both visible-light and thermal imaging for day and night surveillance. (campaign.ageagle.com, eaglenxt.com) Fort Irwin’s National Training Center was created in 1981 to train Army brigade combat teams, and the post says it prepares units for large-scale combat operations. The 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment serves there as the permanent opposing force, built to mimic a near-peer enemy during rotations. (home.army.mil, home.army.mil) That setup helps explain the purchase. EagleNXT said the drones will sharpen “opposition force realism” and counter-drone training, while Fort Irwin’s mission is to expose units to realistic battlefield conditions before deployment. (eaglenxt.com, home.army.mil) The Army has been pushing commercial drone adoption faster through its “Transforming in Contact” effort, which says it is putting new technology in soldiers’ hands for experimentation during realistic training. The program explicitly leans on commercial off-the-shelf systems to speed fielding. (army.mil) The compliance label in EagleNXT’s announcement is also part of the story. The Blue UAS cleared list says listed drones are validated as cyber-secure, compliant with current law and policy, and available for Defense Department purchase and operation. (diu.mil) This was not EagleNXT’s first Army training-center sale of the same aircraft. The company said on April 6 that a U.S. Army unit in Europe ordered 15 eBee VISION systems, and it said in March that the Army had acquired two systems for the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Germany. (markets.businessinsider.com, markets.businessinsider.com) Nine kits is a small order by Pentagon standards, but Fort Irwin is where the Army rehearses how units will fight. Buying more small surveillance drones for that range shows how routine drone reconnaissance and counter-drone drills have become in basic combat preparation. (eaglenxt.com, army.mil, home.army.mil)
