QinetiQ North America has announced that it has been awarded a $90 Million contract to support the overall sustainment actions of the ‘Tactical Adaptable Light Ordnance Neutralization’ (TALON) family of robotic systems for the US Army.
QinetiQ North America say it will be providing ongoing maintenance, upgrades and servicing of the Army’s existing, fielded fleet of TALON robots.
The contract has an expiration date of Dec 16th, 2023.
Over 4,000 TALON robots are now deployed around the world by the US and their allies. They are used primarily to assist military personnel with the extremely dangerous job of detecting and disabling roadside bombs or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) planted by hostile forces to attack troops.
The firm say that TALON robots have been used in more than 80,000 counter-IED missions to date.
“We are proud that TALON continues to be recognized as a robot that is vital to the U.S. military for EOD and counter-IED missions because of its combat proven ruggedness, ease of use, advanced flexible architecture and reliability” said Jeff Yorsz, president and CEO of QinetiQ North America.
“Helping to keep U.S. Soldiers and Marines safe is what drives us and we continue to maintain and improve the TALON product line in support of that goal.”
The contract was awarded by the US Army Contracting Command Warren located at Detroit Arsenal on behalf of PM Force Projection’s Robotic Logistics Support Center which provides fielded robotics hardware across the operational spectrum.
Production of parts will be performed in Franklin Massachusetts.
Impressive.
How long did you take mulling over that? 🙂
It’s called a bacronym
I want the upgraded Dirty Bastard version for the RAF that’s much more resistant to passive counter measures I hear.
Lol. Brilliant.
In all seriousness what are these robots made of? Gold and platinum?
£90 million to support them. Put that into context nearly half the price of a type 31 frigate. Just seems a lot of money.
Robots are supposed to be cheap to operate are they not?
It seems reasonable to me, $90m is around $23k per robot, or about $5k a year, not bad for a squaddie proof machine that may be mission critical.