Pentagon names 25 vendors to compete for $150M in delivery orders during first phase of its Drone Dominance Program, ‘the Gauntlet’
The Pentagon named 25 vendors Tuesday to compete in the first phase of the department’s “Drone Dominance Program,” a list that includes known and relatively unknown companies in the unmanned aerial systems industry.
The evaluation, which officials are calling “the Gauntlet,” will begin on Feb. 18 at Fort Benning in Georgia, according to a press release. Military drone operators will fly and evaluate vendor equipment into early March, when the Defense Department will begin ordering $150 million worth of prototype deliveries expected to arrive over the following five months.
The much-anticipated announcement marks the first of a four-phase approach to fielding one-way attack drones and a crucial nexus for the military’s sprint to adopt and widely produce small, cheap UAS. The American military has lagged behind adversaries — foremost in China, which produces them rapidly and at scale.
Last year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled the “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance” memorandum, which sought to boost manufacturing, rapidly arm units with cheap UAS and cut red tape around training.
The Pentagon expects to field hundreds of thousands of “weaponized, one way attack drones ready for combat” by 2027, according to the release.
Meanwhile, the individual services have been churning away at their own drone programs, to include troop-made systems and plans to purchase large swaths of UAS over the next year. For example, the Marine Corps announced plans to buy 10,000 drones this year and the Army has started standing up small-UAS teams intended to integrate with aviation units.
The Pentagon plans to spend more than $1 billion across the four phases of the Drone Dominance Program.
The vendors selected for “Gauntlet I” notably include multiple Ukraine-based companies, which have faced sluggish bureaucracy in selling equipment to Western countries because their tools are needed on the front lines against Russia.
The Defense Department chose the following vendors to compete in the first phase:
— Anno.Ai
— Ascent AeroSystems
— Auterion
— DZYNE Technologies
— Ewing Aerospace
— Farage Precision
— Firestorm Labs
— General Cherry
— GreenSight
— Griffon Aerospace
— HALO Aeronautics
— Kratos SRE
— ModalAI
— Napatree Technology
— Neros Technologies
— OKSI
— Paladin Defense Services
— Performance Drone Works
— Responsibly
— Swarm Defense
— Teal Drones
— Ukrainian Defense Drones Tech Corp
— Vector Defense
— W.S. Darley & Co.
— XTEND
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the number of companies that submitted proposals or other details about the Gauntlet.
