Dutch Space and the Netherlands Defense have signed an agreement on the delivery of 15 Smart Parafoil Autonomous Delivery Systems (SPADES). SPADES is a reusable parachute system that is capable to fully autonomously deliver supplies of up to 1,000 kilos (2,200 lbs) to any desired location in remote or dangerous areas in support of military or humanitarian missions. The news was announced internationally during PATCAD, the esteemed biennial conference for precision airdrop technology in the US. When dropped from an aircraft at high altitude, the SPADES system uses GPS and an advanced guidance, navigation and control system to accurately fly itself from a large distance to a pre-programmed location point on the ground. With its 50-meter average landing accuracy, SPADES can pin-point the delivery of goods to where these are actually needed. This significantly reduces the logistic footprint and greatly enhances the safety and flexibility of airdrop and ground-based operations. The development of SPADES is the result of a close cooperation between Defense, industry (Dutch Space) and institutions (NLR). The Netherlands Defense is the launching customer of the innovative product.Bart Reijnen, the CEO of Dutch Space said that he was proud to put this front-running European precision airdrop system to work for our own national Defense customers.