AeroVironment Puma RQ-20 Small Unmanned Aircraft Family

The AeroVironment Puma RQ-20 is a small unmanned aircraft family for persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting. Its Puma AE and Puma LE members support autonomous operation from land and maritime environments, modular electro-optical/infrared payloads, and expeditionary use by military and security operators. The Puma AE branch has also been used for civil marine-conservation research. In 2014 NOAA-led tests in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument collected imagery of marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds, marine debris, and coastal habitat. The resulting study found Puma imagery useful for resource monitoring, while identifying camera resolution, weather effects, and post-processing demands as practical limits.