Pentagon taps USNDA to head its ‘Top Drone’ competitions

The Pentagon is partnering with an organization focused on unmanned system competitions to run its Top Drone program, officials said this week, teeing up events that will pit remote pilots against each other under a core blueprint.

At a Technology Readiness and Experimentation (T-REX) event run by the Defense Department’s research and engineering directorate last year, pilots flew drones under simulated battlefield conditions in the inaugural Top Drone demonstration. 

Now, the R&E office is transferring the program to the U.S. National Drone Association, the organization said in a press release Wednesday. USNDA’s competition structure — which it says pushes small drone operators “farther and faster” under simulated battlefield conditions —  will serve as the “primary venue” for identifying troops with top remote pilot skills.

Defense officials have touted competitions as a way to test new systems, share tactics across the force, identify talent and grow an institutional focus toward small drones as the U.S. military races to adopt technology that adversaries, namely Russia, have been using pervasively in combat for years.

“Achieving American drone dominance is about more than scaling lethal capabilities. It’s also about developing the world-class operators who will execute the mission,” said Pentagon CTO Emil Michael, according to the release, which his office affirmed. “We will continue to move at maximum speed to put our elite warfighters to the test, proving they can dominate in contested environments and across multiple domains.”

Established in 2024 as a non-profit, USNDA has since run inter-service competitions, partnered with the military for swarm testing, and emerged as a go-to agent for military drone organizing. Its competitions put pilots under electronic warfare environment stresses and through different terrain, the organization said, testing them on drone-led close quarter combat room clearing and their ability to strike moving targets, for example.

Last September, the association coordinated the military’s first “Drone Crucible,” which saw teams from the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment and Aviation Center of Excellence, Navy SEALs, Air Force explosive ordnance disposal techs and the Marine Corps’ Attack Drone Team go head-to-head in Florida.

Founded by a group of Marine veterans, USNDA was also involved in the development of the Marine Corps’ Attack Drone Team, the first of the military’s formal UAS-focused organizations stood-up in January 2025 that eyed competition as a mechanism for drone proliferation.

Since then, the services and different units have also embarked on their own competition journeys. The Army crowned champions in its first “Best Drone Warfighter Competition” in February and the service’s Special Forces just wrapped up their own inaugural contest last month, for example.

USNDA is positioning itself as a hub for such competitions.

“Warfighters have a ton of demands on their time. We’ve seen lots of competing initiatives and programs vector at one core truth: competition creates excellence,” USNDA President Nathan Ecelbarger, a Marine veteran, told DefenseScoop ahead of the announcement. 

“Top Drone will be the yardstick that can actually and objectively measure operator performance, with closed performance reporting straight to the top, not for the sake of public shame, for the sake of private adjustments when necessary to ensure the guys have the training, tech and tactics they need,” he added. 

Service academies, conventional forces and special operations forces are invited to USNDA competitions, according to the press release. Its first overseas competition will take place in Germany this November, and the organization has invited Ukrainian special operators and other NATO allies to participate.

The USNDA’s “Top Drone National Drone Wars Championship” will occur in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, though the press release did not disclose the event’s location. Criteria for the competitions will be worked out by an “interservice, operator-led” advisory group that USNDA will administer.

Participants will fly systems from the DOD’s Drone Dominance and Swarm Forge programs, USNDA said, two elements of the Pentagon’s billion-dollar plan to adopt small drones over the next couple of years. Operators can also use USNDA drones from industry and academic partners.

“Through our focus on rapid technology experimentation, we’ve seen time and time again, operator fluency is essential,” said Col. Matthew Limeberry, director of the Pentagon’s T-REX effort, according to the release. “Top Drone is about pushing operators to move faster and adapt to the changing operational landscape.”

USNDA said qualification criteria and registration will be posted to the DOD’s Drone Dominance website next month.