Red Cat continues to advance all-domain capabilities

Red Cat's Fang F7 FPV drone. (Red Cat Holdings)

Red Cat Holdings is advancing its all-domain strategy with new partnerships for drone and unmanned surface vehicle (USV) capability.

The company unveiled the first member of its Fang family of first-person view (FPV) drones on 8 October, ahead of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) conference in Washington, DC.

The Fang F7 is a retrievable 7 inch drone “optimised for training and tactical use”, the company said in a statement. The FPV has a carbon-fibre frame designed for durability and stability, the statement said, adding that the product line was “created to strengthen domestic drone production by reshoring manufacturing and replacing components traditionally sourced from China”.

“We have a strong partner with Unusual Machines, who has now been providing NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act]-compliant components for us to be able to build Fang and a line of those drones at different sizes,” Stan Nowak, vice-president of marketing for Red Cat Holdings, told Janes on 14 October at the AUSA conference. There are plans for 8, 10, and 11 inch models, he added.

Red Cat employs the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) throughout its drone technology to make it as interoperable, interchangeable, and modular as possible, enabling customers to decide what payloads and subsystems to integrate, Nowak noted.

The Fang F7 holds about 6 lb of payload. “You get about a 5 minute flight time with that, but if you're only doing a one-way mission, that's really good,” he said, adding that it flies at speeds of up to 75 mph.

Motherships

On 14 October, agreements with Edge Autonomy and AeroVironment to integrate Red Cat drones with larger unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were made public.