Navy Picks Insitu’s ScanEagle and Integrator for ISR

The U.S. Navy has selected Insitu to continue providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance services to the Navy, Marine Corps, and other federal customers, as Sea Power Magazine reported.

The award covers both the ScanEagle and Integrator platforms under a Contractor-Owned, Contractor-Operated model, which puts Insitu’s own aircraft and operators on the mission rather than handing hardware over to government crews.

What the COCO Model Actually Means

Most defense drone contracts deliver aircraft to a military unit, which then trains its own people to fly them. The COCO model works differently. Insitu owns the aircraft, maintains them, and deploys its own field services representatives alongside Navy and Marine Corps units to run the missions. The government pays for ISR services, not hardware.

For the Navy and Marine Corps, that arrangement buys operational continuity. Insitu’s field teams have been deploying with the Navy since 2005 and the Marine Corps since 2004. The aircraft have accumulated more than 1.6 million combat flight hours.

That operational track record is embedded in how Insitu’s representatives integrate on ships and at forward operating bases, and it doesn’t transfer easily to a new contractor.

The contract opens competition for task orders from Insitu and other selected partners, meaning this isn’t a sole-source lock. But Insitu comes in with two decades of shipboard experience across more than 45 different vessel classes and sites on six continents.

ScanEagle: The Platform That Started It All

ScanEagle is a compact, fixed-wing UAS with a 10.2-foot wingspan, 62-pound maximum takeoff weight, and a 17-pound payload capacity. It runs on JP-5, JP-8, or C-10 gasoline and reaches a maximum speed of 92 mph with an 18-plus-hour endurance ceiling. Operating ceiling is 19,500 feet.

The current configuration includes Proliferated Low-Earth Orbit SATCOM, which enables control beyond line of sight without occupying payload space. The FLARES Vertical Takeoff and Landing kit lets ScanEagle operate from minimal deck space with no aircraft modifications, launching in under 30 minutes with two operators.

FLARES climbs vertically to 500 feet above ground level, then releases ScanEagle into fixed-wing flight in under five minutes.

On the intelligence side, ScanEagle carries electro-optical and medium-wave infrared sensors for day-to-night operations, a Synthetic Aperture Radar capable of maritime and ground moving target indication, laser options including range finder and designator, AIS for maritime vessel identification, and electronic warfare and SIGINT payloads.

AI-assisted wide-area maritime search and automatic target recognition are built into the platform’s current sensor suite. It’s been operating in GPS-contested and denied environments since 2018.

Integrator: When the Mission Demands More

The Integrator is the larger sibling. At 8.2 feet long with a 16-foot wingspan and a maximum takeoff weight of 175 pounds, it hauls up to 50 pounds of payload across 10 configurable bays. Endurance reaches 27.5 hours with SATCOM Extended Range, and point-to-point range extends to 2,000 nautical miles, long enough to fly from Guam to Okinawa in a single sortie. At 500 nautical miles from base, Integrator can stay on station for 13 hours before returning to refuel.

Maximum speed is 104 mph and its ceiling also reaches 19,500 feet. Like ScanEagle, it carries FLARES VTOL capability, can operate with Proliferated Low-Earth Orbit SATCOM and Geosynchronous Orbit SATCOM options, and runs GPS-jamming resilience features including visual-based navigation and autonomous radio frequency switching.

Its payload options include wide-area motion imagery, multi-spectral optics, communications relay, electronic warfare, and SIGINT.

The Integrator’s real value proposition is that it delivers Group 4 and Group 5 platform capabilities at Group 3 acquisition and operating costs. For the Navy, that means persistent over-the-horizon ISR from a platform that fits on a small ship deck rather than requiring a full carrier deck or large airfield.

Two Decades Compressed Into a New Contract

Insitu has been providing continuous ISR services globally at an average of more than 10,000 flight hours per month. The company has trained more than 10,500 UAS operators worldwide. This contract renewal, covering both platforms with updated autonomy and resilience capabilities as described by Insitu CEO Diane Rose, continues a relationship the Navy built before most of its current junior officers were old enough to enlist.

Both platforms now incorporate what Insitu calls next-generation resilience features, including autonomous navigation, weatherization updates, detect-and-avoid systems, and AI-assisted targeting and search capabilities. The COCO model means those updates travel with Insitu’s operators rather than requiring the Navy to retrain its own fleet.

DroneXL’s Take

Strip away the press release language, and what this contract actually confirms is that the Navy hasn’t found a better answer in 20 years of looking. ScanEagle flew its first Navy mission in 2005. The program has survived every budget cycle, every acquisition reform effort, and every round of competitor pitches since. That’s not inertia. That’s operational credibility earned in the field.

The COCO model is underappreciated in defense drone coverage. The Navy isn’t paying for aircraft. It’s paying for ISR services, which means Insitu absorbs the maintenance burden, the training burden, and the integration complexity. For a service branch stretched across dozens of operational theaters, that’s a meaningful trade-off.

The AI angle in the headline is real but understated in the announcement. ScanEagle’s automatic target recognition and wide-area maritime search capability aren’t cosmetic upgrades.

In the Indo-Pacific, where surface and subsurface contacts need to be tracked across enormous ocean distances with limited manned aircraft hours available, persistent AI-assisted ISR at Group 3 cost and Group 4 performance is exactly what combatant commanders need.

Photo credit: InSitu