Standing amid a grove of pepper plants in Southern California’s Thousand Oaks last week, Christopher Thompson revved up his plane’s tiny 6-inch propeller and then gently tossed it into the sky, much as weekend hobbyists fly their airborne toys.
But this mini-aircraft called the Raven, weighing slightly more than four pounds and painted in Army gray, is no ordinary model.
It is actually a tiny U.S. military spy plane that can hover quietly 500 feet in the air and transmit video images to operators several miles away. These Simi Valley, Calif.-made planes are providing vital information to ground combat soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who want to know what’s happening over the ridge and around the bend.
“It served us well,” said Thompson, a private first class with the Army National Guard, as he demonstrated how his unit used the Raven in Afghanistan. There, the aircraft helped his platoon avoid enemy ambushes and pinpoint the location of insurgents’ mortar positions.
These unmanned planes have quickly become a mainstay of U.S. military operations and are helping propel the growth of a once-tiny company that until recently was better known for its gangly, pedal- powered planes.
The aircraft is not only popular at the Pentagon, but its manufacturer has caught the attention of investors.
AeroVironment Inc., the small company with headquarters in Monrovia, Calif., recently has become the darling of Wall Street, where investors have been driving up the stock price to all-time highs. The stock has risen more than 50 percent since March.
The Raven, with a wingspan of 4 1/2 feet, and a smaller one-pound Wasp are fitted with cameras that transmit live-video images of what’s ahead.
The planes, which are collapsible and fit in a backpack, are controlled on the ground by a soldier using a hand-held pad resembling a video-game controller and a laptop with video images of the plane’s flight path. If a soldier loses control or sight of the plane, its onboard computer automatically takes over and flies itself back to where it was launched.
In June, the Pentagon awarded AeroVironment a contract potentially worth $200 million for the company’s new larger Puma AE unmanned surveillance plane. That’s on top of the $358 million contract the company won in 2005 to build more than 1,900 Raven aircraft.
Also on the drawing board are tiny vehicles that just a few years ago would have seemed like science fiction.
Under a $2.3 million Pentagon research grant, the company is developing an aircraft with flapping 3-inch wings that could fly indoors.
In a separate $4.6 million grant, the company is developing a one-pound aircraft that could fly quietly to a location, perch itself there and then relay to base live video images of what’s happening there.
