Builders of the ground stations used to pilot unmanned aircraft for the U.S. military are scrambling to understand the fine points of a Pentagon directive that, as one executive put it, "changes everything." America's thousands of unmanned aircraft have been a famously fractured ISR force, with each military service relying on a different type of ground station and software to control its aircraft. The Air Force, the world's largest operator of UAVs, relies on ground control stations supplied by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems to fly its Predators and Reapers. The Army has designated AAI Corp.'s One System ground station as the control unit for its forthcoming fleet of Sky Warrior aircraft under construction by General Atomics. The control software for these and other UAVs has been proprietary.
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