AeroVironment, Inc. is an American defense contractor headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, that designs and manufactures unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Paul B. MacCready Jr., a designer of human-powered aircraft, founded the company in 1971. The company is best known for its lightweight human-powered and solar-powered vehicles. The company is the US military's top supplier of small drones —notably the Raven, Switchblade, Wasp and Puma models.

Vehicles

Among the vehicles the company built are:

Programs

As of 2007 AeroVironment held a five-year, $4.7 million IDIQ (indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity) contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to develop UAV propulsion technologies. The contract also provided for specific tasks such as integration of solar cells into aircraft wings, electric motor efficiency improvement, and hydrogen storage systems. In 2023, Israel submitted a request to the US Department of Defense for 200 Switchblade 600 attack drones. As of 7 November, it is unclear whether the request has been approved.

HAPSMobile

HAPSMobile is a subsidiary of SoftBank planning to operate High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) networks, with AeroVironment as a minority owner. HAPSMobile develops the Hawk30 solar-powered unmanned aircraft for stratospheric telecommunications, and has a strategic relationship with Loon LLC, a subsidiary of Google's parent Alphabet Inc.

Subsidiaries

AeroVironment owns Skytower, Inc., which was formed in 2000 to develop the technologies and government approvals to use high altitude UAVs as "atmospheric satellites", or high altitude communications relay platforms. In July 2002 the NASA/AeroVironment UAV Pathfinder Plus carried commercial communications relay equipment developed by Skytower to test using the aircraft as an "atmospheric satellite". Skytower, in partnership with NASA and the Japan Ministry of Telecommunications used the aircraft to transmit both an HDTV signal as well as an IMT-2000 wireless communications signal from 65000 ft. It was the equivalent of a 12 mi tall transmitter tower. Because of the aircraft's high angle, the transmission utilized only one watt of power, or 1/10,000 that required by a terrestrial tower to provide the same signal. According to SkyTower's Stuart Hindle, "SkyTower platforms are basically geostationary satellites without the time delay." Hindle said that such platforms flying in the stratosphere, as opposed to actual satellites, can achieve much higher levels of frequency use. "A single SkyTower platform can provide over 1,000 times the fixed broadband local access capacity of a geostationary satellite using the same frequency band, on a bytes per second per square mile basis." In January 2021, the company acquired Arcturus UAV, the manufacturer of the Arcturus T-20 UAV for US$405m.