Following cancellation of the troubled Army MQM-105 Aquila RPV program (14 years of effort, plus more than $1 billion invested), in January 1988 the Army reorganized its UAV efforts by combining the MICOM RPV and UAV project offices into an Army UAV Project Office (AUAV). Congress finally lost patience with the ineffective manner in which the armed services were pursuing separate and often overlapping RPV efforts. It froze all FY88 RDT&E funding ($52.6 million) for non-lethal unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and directed DoD to develop a coherent joint-service plan. In June 1988, the Pentagon submitted a seven-year, $2.3 billion master plan covering de velopment and procurement of four different UAVs (Close-Range, Short-Range, Medium-Range, and Endurance) for a variety of missions. A joint program office for UAVs was established at NAVAIR (collocated with the cruise missile program office) to manage the programs.
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