Insitu Pacific has been awarded a three-year extension to its sustainment contract of the Royal Australian Navy’s ScanEagle UAS capability.

The extension will cover the continuation of the RAN’s UAS experimentation program through the uncapitalised Navy Minor Program (NMP)1942 which seeks to inform the requirements for its larger Project SEA 129 Phase 5 Block I maritime unmanned aircraft system (MUAS) program.

“Insitu Pacific is proud to continue to support RAN in their ongoing RPAS experimentation and testing work over the next three years,” managing director of Insitu Pacific, Andrew Duggan said in a December 6 company release. “This contract extension provides us with an opportunity to deepen our existing sovereign capability and supply chains in Australia, and partner with RAN to offer up new capabilities for testing in the coming years.”

As part of the contract, Insitu Pacific delivers pilot and maintenance training courses including via virtual training, with RAN operators at Nowra being instructed by Insitu Pacific Instructors in Brisbane.

“Accelerated due to COVID-19 border closures, the successful rollout of our virtual training program provides a valuable demonstration of how RPAS training could be readily delivered to personnel deployed at dispersed bases around Australia,” Duggan added.

The ScanEagle debuted with the ADF when deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan with the Australian Army, and was taken on by the RAN in 2014 for NMP1942. The RAN has deployed the system operationally, when the former Adelaide class frigate HMAS Newcastle deployed to the Gulf of Oman in 2017 with a flight embarked.

Scan Eagle and its larger RQ-21A/Integrator derivative have been shortlisted for the Army’s LAND 129 Phase 3 requirement, a decision on which is believed to be imminent.