The US Department of Defense has selected 19 companies to advance to Gauntlet II of its $1.1-billion Drone Dominance program, bringing them a stage closer to competing for production orders totaling 60,000 small-class one-way attack unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
The companies advanced after a qualification event at Camp Grayling, Michigan, where 49 manufacturers tested 79 platforms in daytime and nighttime missions focused on long-range strike and tactical assaults in urban settings and other constricted domains.
Gauntlet II will take place in August at Fort Carson, Colorado, in which each company must deliver 120 kamikaze drones equipped with lethality payloads within about five weeks, demonstrating they can manufacture for wartime scenarios.
The finalists are Ascent Aerosystems, Auterion Government Solutions, Griffon Aerospace, Grim Tech, Hyperscale, ModalAI, Mountain Horse Solutions + AG3Labs, Neros, ORQA US, Perennial Autonomy, Renegade UxS, Skycutter, Stellarion, Swarm Defense, Teal Drones, Ukrainian Defense Drones Tech Corp., Vector, Wilcox Cherry Defense, and XTEND Reality.
Each drone maker is paired with one or more approved payload suppliers, including Bravo Ordnance, Kela Defense US, Kraken Kinetics, Mountain Horse, and Northrop Grumman Systems, maintaining rapid assembly and transfer of low-cost UAS by primarily using US supply chains.
After Gauntlet II, the top performers will receive prototype production orders as the Pentagon works to rapidly expand its inventory of expendable combat drones.
