Red Cat Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: RCAT) has announced announces that the firm’s subsidiary — Teal Drones (Teal) — has been selected by the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the U.S. Army as one of two finalists competing in the Short Range Reconnaissance Tranche 2 (SRR T2) Program of Record. As part of being named a finalist, Teal will be awarded $3 million of additional funding to support final prototype development and completion of remaining SRR milestones.
Teal was previously one of three drone manufacturers selected to develop a next-generation, small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) designed for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) for the U.S. Army. The ultimate goal of the SRR program is to provide small, rucksack portable, sUAS capabilities to Army platoons (20-50 soldiers) for situational awareness beyond the next terrain feature.
Teal 2 is built in Teal’s factory in Salt Lake City and is an affordable, man-portable sUAS designed to “Dominate the Night™.” Teal 2 has a best-in-class night vision camera, fully modular design, multi-vehicle control, and artificial intelligence capabilities. The drone is designed to support U.S. military operations, public safety organizations, and U.S. government agencies in a variety of environments. It is both Blue UAS Certified, which indicates its approval by the Department of Defense, and FAA Remote ID approved.
“I’m excited to advance our collaboration with the U.S. Army as we seek to provide the ideal solution for SRR. We are grateful to have been selected as one of the two finalists in a program that began with more than 37 bidding vendors,. We’re developing our next generation product from the ground up to meet the highly specific requirements of SRR, with the mission of providing warfighters superhuman capabilities.” — George Matus, founder of Teal and Red Cat’s Chief Technology Officer