The number of aerial drones with combined strike and surveillance capabilities, such as General Atomics’ Reaper, will more than triple over the next decade, according to the U.S. Defense Department’s 2011 Aircraft Procurement Plan.
The demand for unmanned systems, which offer expanding abilities without risk to human pilots and at generally lower cost, will create business opportunities for suppliers such as General Atomics of San Diego and FLIR Systems Inc. of Wilsonville, Oregon, even as Congress aims to trim the defense budget amid trillion-dollar deficits.
“It’s certainly a huge growth area,” Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a research organization in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “We really are at the front end of understanding what unmanned vehicles -- not just air, but undersea and land -- can do for us operationally, and what it’s going to lead to in terms of changes to our industrial base.”