On 13 October, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) announced that the US Army awarded it a contract to add a new open-architecture Electronic Warfare (EW) capability onto the MQ-1C GRAY EAGLE drone.

The EW capability is specifically required to be compliant with the “C5ISR Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS) architecture.

The C5ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS) Mounted Form Factor, shortened to CMFF, is a US Army program of record which seeks to simply upgrades and addition of new capability by defining a CMOSS standard that suppliers can follow in producing their electronic cards. The cards that respect the standard can then be plugged in and out of a common chassis already plumbed for power and networking. The cards are used to bring capabilities relating to positioning, navigation, and timing; electronic warfare protection; radio waveform; and others.

This approach eliminates the need to install and upgrade individual communication and computing systems and enables savings in terms of size, weight and power consumption.

Under this US Army contract, GA-ASI will work with AeroVironment Inc. (AV) to integrate onto GRAY EAGLE their SHARKCAGE Expeditionary C5ISR Chassis (ECCv3).

The SHARKCAGE is a passively cooled, tactical VPX chassis with embedded management board. It is designed to take a “wide variety” of CMOSS-compliant 3U VPX cards, as well as others compliant with the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) standard which has been defined by a consortium of more than 140 industry partners.

The AV chassis is environmentally sealed to withstand the most hostile conditions and enable land, air and sea operations as well as deal with the extreme temperature changes associated with use within airborne pods.

GA-ASI and AV have already collaborated in the past, carrying out a number of demonstrations since 2024 exploiting the GRAY EAGLE’s own open architecture.

According to GA-ASI, this new EW capability will be the 3rd one to be added to GRAY EAGLE thanks to CMOSS, and it will “signal a major step forward in the ability to conduct deep sensing in the Pacific while increasing the survivability and lethality of the Gray Eagle at distances relevant in the INDOPACOM Area of Responsibility”. GA-ASI reports that other recent additions to GRAY EAGLE have included Electronic Attack, Communications Relay, Counter-UAS, and Signals Intelligence capabilities.

GRAY EAGLE was designed following a Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) approach that has facilitated the integration of new systems over time. This has allowed, early this year, the GRAY EAGLE to become the first flying with command relayed via Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (PLEO) satellite constellations.

Follow us on Telegram, Facebook and X.