News

AUVSI - SOUTHCOM prepares for UAS solicitation

February 06, 2009

US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is preparing for the imminent release of a statement of work covering contractor owned and operated UAS support to counter-illicit smuggling operations.

Designated as 'Project CAZADOR,' the stated project goal is to 'Conduct OPEVAL of a maritime "off the shelf" Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) Unmanned Air System (UAS) providing Detection and Monitoring (D&M) in support of Counter Illicit Trafficking (CIT) operations in the SOUTHCOM Area of Focus (AOF).'

"Project CAZADOR is what I would consider to be the first maritime real world evaluation of a UAV supporting counter-illicit trafficking operations," observed Commander Kevin "Q" Quarderer, an "Innovation Officer" within the Commander's Action Group at U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).

Speaking before the Association of Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI) Program Review on 5 February 2009, he said, "I know some people would probably disagree with me on that one but I believe this is truly going to be the first project where we are going to go out and do counter-illicit trafficking."

He continued, "This is a competitive project so I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail. But I can give you a little bit. I can tell you that I'm hoping to release the competitive work statement for this in about 2 - 3 working days."

"We expect to deploy out of El Salvador...working with our partner nations. We expect to be working off the littorals and we expect to be doing blue water detections. We expect to take solicitations for service - a COCO - corporate owned / corporate operated. SOUTHCOM in the end would not own anything here. Our ability to go out and evaluate how well a MALE class unmanned air system will support counter-illicit trafficking operations in real world environments. We're very excited about this. We're leaning forward on this with the help of a lot of individuals, including partner nations. And we're very excited about it."

By Scott R. Gourley - North America Editor