In 1940, when he was only 15 years old, Paul MacCready of New Haven, CT, won a national contest for a flying machine he had built. After completing his studies at prestigious schools like Yale and CalTech, Paul founded AeroVironment in 1971. Paul’s mission, as stated on the company website “was to use aerospace engineering principles to solve important challenges facing the world, and do so with a spirit of defying conventional wisdom about achieving the impossible – to do what nobody else had ever done before.” In 1977, Paul was the first recipient of the Kremer Prize for doing what nobody else had ever done before, creating a working human-powered aircraft.

In the early 1980’s, AeroVironment was commissioned to develop an unmanned aircraft for NASA, the Pathfinder. The success of the NASA Pathfinder led to the Pathfinder Plus, Centurion, Helios, and eventually the attention of the U.S. Pentagon. In the early 2000’s, AeroVironment developed the RQ-11 Raven, followed by the Wasp III and RQ-20 Puma for the Pentagon. Today, AeroVironment is the largest supplier of small drones for the US military. And though Paul trained as a U.S. Navy Pilot, he had never intended AeroVironment to solely be under military contract. “We realized decades ago that our UAS could serve a much wider set of customer needs than defense,” said Scott Newbern, AeroVironment’s chief technology officer. “We understood that defense customers represented the earliest adopters of our UAS technology, and the experience we would gain by supporting them would give us the ability to support missions in science and nature and beyond.”

As drone application use cases have broadened over the last decade, AeroVironment has proudly seen its drones used to pursue endeavors outside of the military sector. In 2012, AeroVironment collaborated with the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to do a population count of Sandhill cranes in Colorado. The birds migrate through the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, covering many miles. The best way to get a population count is through aerial imagery. AeroVironment deployed Raven drones to replace expensive, noisy, environmentally hazardous manned aircraft to survey the cranes.

Then, in 2014 and 2015, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service used AeroVironment’s Puma drone to carry out several experiments. The drones were being used to survey vegetation, monk seals, sea turtles, and sea birds in northwestern Hawaii. AeroVironment drones were next used to conduct wildlife studies in Alaska, as well as ice surveys in Antarctica. Their drones also conducted surveys of oil spills along California and the Arctic Ocean. AeroVironment’s participation in these groundbreaking drone programs helped to set the parameters of how drones can be used in scientific research.

AeroVironment is still primarily a military contractor, but at heart, the company is carrying out Paul’s vision. His wish was to develop aircraft that could do more for the world with less. Using innovative designs to take us higher without negatively impacting the environment. As stated on the company website, “Our innovative unmanned aircraft systems are designed to broaden our customers’ horizons, enabling them to see the world in powerful, new ways and to tackle challenges that previously seemed insurmountable.” Today, AeroVironment’s drones are being used in military service, to conduct scientific research, explore new worlds, and push the boundaries of unmanned aerospace possibilities.