GKN Aerospace has signed a development agreement with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) covering the design, development and manufacture of fuel bladders for the MQ-9B Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) system.
GKN Aerospace develops, builds and supplies an extensive range of advanced aerospace systems and components made by Additive Manufacturing (AM) and other innovative manufacturing technologies focused to reduce weight on the aircrafts.
GKN Aerospace will work in conjunction with GA-ASI to design and manufacture the fuel bladders at the GKN Aerospace facility in Tallassee, Alabama. Stefan Svenson, vice president of GKN Aerospace Special Products Group said: “We look forward to working with GA-ASI to provide a vital fuel system solution for this long-endurance Predator B platform variant. We have been supplying fuel systems for many decades and for many airframe platforms and MQ-9B fully exploits all our recent advances in both manufacturing and materials technologies.”
The agreement covers the fuel bladder system for the first production aircraft slated for 2018, with a potential full contract value of USD 15M when the aircraft enters into service with NATO’s UAV AIRWORTHINESS REQUIREMENTS (defined in STANAG 4671). MQ-9B is a "Type-Certifiable" version of GA-ASI’s Predator® B product line. The target is to create fuel bladders in complex shapes that fully exploit all available space on the MQ-9B airframe, maximizing the fuel load capacity and platform endurance.
