Larson Announces $7 Million for Bloomfield’s Kaman Aerospace Helicopter
Bloomfield, CT – Today, Rep. John B. Larson (CT-01) visited Kaman Aerospace’s Bloomfield headquarters and celebrated $7 million in new funding for the K-MAX Autonomous Logistics System that Larson helped secure in the FY2022 government funding package.
“Right here in Bloomfield, Kaman engineers and manufactures products serving the aviation and defense sectors, among many other industries,” said Larson. “Autonomous logistics systems will fill critical needs to support both our military and firefighters. In fact, experts have identified the lack of these systems as the Marine Corps’ ‘Achilles heel.’ I was proud to lead efforts to secure this new funding for the research and development of these systems.”
“Kaman is working intently to ensure our military has options to field trustworthy, autonomous logistics systems to solve their toughest challenges. Thanks to unwavering support from Congress, with Congressman Larson leading the way along with Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Joe Courtney, we have been able to advance our autonomy development on our growing family of cargo unmanned systems. With funding from FY 22 appropriations, we will be able to immediately carry forward lessons learned from last year’s highly successful K-MAX TITAN autonomy demonstration for the United States Marine Corps, also funded by Congress. We will continue to put that knowledge and technology to use on K-MAX and leverage that capability on next-generation, purpose-built autonomous systems, including our new medium-lift KARGO UAV,” said Kaman CEO Ian Walsh.
Rep. Larson led a bipartisan group of House colleagues to ensure funding for the K-MAX Autonomous Logistics System was included in this year’s government funding package, sending a letter to Appropriations Committee leaders during funding negotiations. His $7 million funding request was signed into law by President Biden on March 15th.
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