Contractors gobble up unmanned aircraft firms, reports Washington Post.

By Marjorie Censer

Monday, October 18, 2010

As the market for unmanned aircraft matures, local companies are jockeying for a place within the industry, expecting it to be a resilient part of the shrinking defense budget.

Aircraft equipped with cameras and, in some cases, weapons and operating without pilots are not new to the Pentagon. But government and industry leaders are now focused on improving the systems, trying to make them more technologically sophisticated and able to carry more equipment, according to Mitchell Martin, a senior managing director with the investment firm McLean Group.