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Predator variant eyes clearance for Gulf sales
November 17th, 2009 | Uncategorized | Posted by Andrew Chuter
The Predator unmanned air vehicle is never far from the public eye here, thanks to its exploits over Iraq and more recently Afghanistan and Pakistan, but General Atomics Aeronautical, the company that makes them, is rarely in evidence in the region.
That changed this week when, for the first times in years, General Atomics took a stand at the Dubai show to market Predator and products such as the Lynx radar.
Until now, Predator has been exportable to only a selected list of NATO members and others.
The vehicle, sometimes known as the Predator A, is operational with the U.S. military and the Italian air force.
The machine has been on the U.S. government’s banned list for exports to the Gulf region and elsewhere.
Now, though, General Atomics has developed a new export variant of Predator, which it hopes will allow the company to sell the UAV to America’s allies in the region.
Chris Ames, the business development director at General Atomics, says that without any significant changes, the company has come up with a UAV it thinks will allow Predator to satisfy U.S. export requirements but retain the performance characteristics which made it famous.
The new export version won’t be capable of being weaponized, however.
Ames said the machine would be able to undertake its mission as a persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform but wouldn’t carry missiles or other weapons.
“The vehicle is going through the U.S. approval process now and we are hoping for approval soon. We have conducted due diligence and we are satisfied it will meet export regulations,” Ames said.
In the meantime, the company is using the Dubai show to test the water locally and gauge possible levels of interest in the vehicle.
Ames declined to be drawn on what the proposed changes to the vehicle are, or what it was that caused the U.S. government to restrict exportability in the first place.
The executive hinted, though, that one of the concerns in the past related to violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime – a treaty set up to stop the proliferation of unmanned systems capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction.
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