MARV-EL passes performance evaluation for uncrewed aerial resupply

The Medium Aerial Resupply Vehicle – Expeditionary Logistics (MARV-EL) system, an uncrewed aerial resupply system, has passed its US Navy and US Marine Corps (USMC) Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System program office (PMA-263) performance evaluation at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona.

The evaluation put the system through its paces for three weeks to ensure it met USMC standards in terms of medium aerial resupply. That meant it went through payload testing, software evaluation, navigation checks, and tests both on the ground and in the air.

Requirements for the MARV-EL system state that it should be capable of transporting more than 150kg approximately 50nm with fully autonomous take-off, landing and waypoint navigation.

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MARV-EL was initiated in February 2022 when a capability document for medium autonomous aerial delivery was signed. PMA-263 requested white paper submissions from vendors and evaluated 26 proposals on ways to deliver MARV-EL.

Kaman Aerospace and Leidos were each selected in January 2023 to develop and deliver one prototype system to demonstrate air vehicle capability at the end of the 18-month period of performance.

The programme office’s next step is to complete the analysis of the data collected during Yuma flight testing, then select a vendor to enter a formal rapid prototyping Middle Tier Acquisition (MTA) programme to continue development and conduct formal developmental testing.

“PMA-263 is dedicated to deploying this much needed unmanned logistics capability in support of Marine Corps Force Design objectives”, said Tom Matthews, PMA-263 deputy program manager.

“The PMA-263 team were able to execute a plan that enabled competition, rapid prototyping, and flight test demonstrations within a two-year time frame”.

Related Programmes in Defence Insight

Joint Tactical Autonomous Aerial Resupply System (JTAARS) / Medium ULS-A [USMC]