Jay Clemens
A new Northern Sky Research report predicts the unmanned aircraft system satellite communications and imaging markets will respectively reach $19.9 billion and $3.7 billion in cumulative revenues over a 10-year period ending 2025.
NSR said Monday the defense and intelligence community’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements for operations in hostile areas spur the demand for unmanned airborne systems.
“Across the UAS industry value-chain, there are opportunities for the satellite industry, especially in satcom services, as payloads and sensor suites get more sophisticated, and the end-customer demands more bandwidth with the emergence of applications like slow-motion video in real-time,” said Prateep Basu, NSR analyst and report author.
NSR forecasts manufacturers will produce more than 5,000 active UAS satcom units by 2025, with Medium Altitude Long Endurance airframes representing 80 percent of the growth.
The market research and consulting firm also estimates the commercial UAS imaging services industry to be worth nearly $200 million worldwide at present and projects the market to hit $550 million in annual revenue by 2025 due to the demand for image analytics and surveying/inspection services.
