The Defense Department this week announced the winners of the second “Gauntlet” competition under its Drone Dominance Program, the Pentagon’s signature effort to rapidly field low-cost drones, and said it plans to purchase about 60,000 systems from the top-performing vendors.
The program, which began last year, is jointly managed by the Defense Innovation Unit and the Test Resource Management Center, with Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division serving as the contracting authority. The department aims to acquire more than 200,000 unmanned aerial systems across several phases of the initiative by 2027.
Gauntlet 2 took place in recent weeks and included two mission areas: deep strike and close quarters battle. According to the Defense Innovation Unit, operators flew 1,858 sorties across 23 platforms from 19 companies. Each of the 11 platforms evaluated at long distance made it to 15 km, compared with only 24% of drones managing to reach 10 km in Gauntlet 1.
The deep strike leaderboard was topped by Perennial Autonomy, followed by Hyperscale, Neros, Skycutter and Swarm Defense Technologies. In the close quarters battle category, Neros came in first with a score of 88.1, followed by ORQA US LLC at 82.8, XTEND Reality Inc. at 80.2, Vector at 78.2 and ModalAI Inc. at 74.3, according to the program’s published scoring.
XTEND said on September 16 that it delivered and demonstrated 120 of its STRIKER systems for the evaluation. Vector said in a LinkedIn post that its selection came with orders for up to 5,000 systems, part of a combined allocation across confined environments and deep strike mission areas that the program has set at 60,000 units total. Vector also said it received orders for its high-voltage electronic safe and arm device, and that it is the only American company to win awards for both unmanned systems and that arming hardware in the Gauntlet II flyoff.
Other performers in Gauntlet 2 that did not make the deep strike leaderboard included Ascent Aerosystems, Auterion Government Solutions, Griffon Aerospace, ORQA US, Stellarion and UDD Tech Corp. Close quarters participants that did not make the leaderboard included Griffon Aerospace, Grim Tech, a team of Mountain Horse and AG3 Labs, Renegade UxS, Skycutter, Teal Drones and Wilcox Cherry Defense.
Compared with Gauntlet 1, officials said the drones are “cheaper, more capable, and sourced from a supply chain more closely tied to the American industrial base.”
Officials are planning to kick off Gauntlet 2.5 next month, focused on so-called “bomber” drones. Gauntlet 3 is slated to start about six months after Gauntlet 2, and Gauntlet 4, billed as the final Gauntlet under the program, is expected to take place about six months after Gauntlet 3 wraps up.
Sources: Military.com · DefenseScoop