The New Economy is saturated with Internet start-ups clawing for cash. But one Manassas firm hopes venture capitalists will see the value in building and selling a real highflier, not just scalable databases and integrated "e-commerce solutions."

Skywatch Systems is asking investors to dig deep for the development of an unmanned aerial vehicle, commonly known as a UAV. Comp-any President Matt Hutchison, a native of Herndon who holds a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech, says UAVs have a unique ability to take on what the aerospace industry calls "the three Ds — dull, dirty and dangerous."

In the military, UAVs are useful for high-altitude spy missions and observation in battlefield environments where sending a pilot is too risky. But Skywatch hopes to capture an emerging nonmilitary market in organizations like NASA, the International Ice Patrol and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Applications for a high-altitude UAV include weather tracking and atmospheric research. "Most of the manned flights for hurricane tracking, for instance, penetrate a storm at mid-level." Hutchison says. Those planes are usually four-engine turbo props. Flying above a storm is a more accurate way to track its path, but aircraft equipped for high-altitude flying such as NASA’s ER2 ( a civilian version of a U2 craft) are single-engine planes and hazardous in extreme weather. "Flying over a storm at high altitude poses a risk because if the pilot loses that one engine, he has to ditch that plane."

That danger disappears with unmanned aerial vehicles like the proposed Skywatch, which can fly at high altitudes with a smaller payload and for long periods of time, as long as 30 hours or more.

Skywatch is a joint venture of Manassas-based Aurora Flight Sciences Corp. and Israel Aircraft Industries of Tel Aviv. The venture faces two major hurdles before bringing a UAV to market. The first is raising capital in a bloated dot-com economy. "We project the same rate of return as an Internet start-up, but the time to return for us is projected at five to six years versus 12 to 18 months for a dot-com," Hutchison says. The company estimates it needs $40 million to carry through its plans.

The second obstacle surrounds international law and the exportation of UAVs. Export of unmanned aerial aircraft and related technologies are controlled by the Missile Technology Control Regime, a voluntary agreement among 33 nations. Israel did not participate in the agreement, so sharing technology with a Tel Aviv partner requires permission of the State Department.

Undeterred, Hutchison says, "We are working the State Department, and it’s going to be an ongoing issue because we want to develop an exportable product."

The technology needed to develop a UAV already exists, Hutchison says. There are several projects across the nation looking at different but highly focused uses of UAVs — including the Air Force’s Global Hawk for military missions and a solar-powered UAV project supported in part by NASA.

Hutchison’s challenge is marrying the bits and pieces of readily available technology into a fully integrated system. "We are using a lot of off-the-shelf products in the development."