Insitu raises $4 million for spy craft

Saturday, February 8, 2003

Insitu raises $4 million for spy craft
ScanEagle is cheaper, more efficient than current models

By JOHN COOK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The Insitu Group, which is working with The Boeing Co. to develop unmanned surveillance aircraft, has raised $4 million in venture capital financing.

The Bingen, Wash., company will use the money to complete design work on the ScanEagle, which at 33 pounds can fly for 20 hours at speeds up to 68 knots. Military applications include transmitting real-time video and other data to ground stations 100 miles away.

Second Avenue Partners, a Seattle venture capital firm that specializes in technology investments, led the round.

"We see a huge opportunity," said Pete Higgins, managing director at Second Avenue Partners. "It's a bet on a great team of guys doing something that is an order of magnitude cheaper and in many ways better than what is currently done."

Higgins said the two dominant unmanned aircraft currently used by the U.S. military -- the Global Hawk and the Predator -- cost $30 million and $3.7 million, respectively. Each spy plane also requires a large support staff.

Insitu's plane, with a 10-foot wingspan, will cost about $60,000. It can be controlled by one person, Higgins said.

At a U.S. Navy training exercise in the Bahamas this week, a ScanEagle prototype flew at altitudes of 1,000 to 3,000 feet and transmitted data to warships, ground personnel and other aircraft. It landed by catching a rope attached to a 30-foot-high pole.

Once the domain of hobbyists, remote-controlled aircraft have become an important component of the Defense Department's surveillance efforts in the past 10 years. The Predator, which is large enough to carry missiles, was used to kill an al-Qaida terrorist in Yemen last year. It also was deployed in Afghanistan.

The ScanEagle is not big enough to carry missiles. But equipped with a high-quality camera, the aircraft can wirelessly beam images to ground stations where military missions can be coordinated.

Insitu, which started working with Boeing 12 months ago, builds the aircraft. Boeing provides the systems integration, communications and payload expertise.

In addition to the ScanEagle, Insitu is developing a commercial version of the aircraft called the SeaScan. That aircraft, which is already in production, could be used by U.S. Border Patrol agents to track movements of illegal immigrants or by the Forest Service to pinpoint forest fires.

The company has already received orders from fishing companies that will send the plane to find tuna on the open seas, Higgins said.

Insitu was founded in 1992 by Tad McGeer, a pioneer in the field of unmanned aircraft and the developer of the Aerosonde weather aircraft.

In 1998, McGeer worked with the University of Washington to organize the first Atlantic crossing of an unmanned aircraft. The plane, the Aerosonde Laima, now hangs in the Museum of Flight. The company and the UW are planning a trans-Pacific crossing that is more than double the distance of the 2,000 mile Atlantic flight.

P-I reporter John Cook can be reached at 206-448-8075 or johncook@seattlepi.com

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