AFCENT awards Kraus Hamdani $270M for solar-powered, long-endurance drones

WASHINGTON — US Air Forces Central (AFCENT) will buy up to $270 million worth of long-range, solar-powered scout drones from Kraus Hamdani Aerospace, the California-based company announced Tuesday.

Light enough to be carried by two men and launched off the back of an SUV, Kraus Hamdani’s K1000ULE drone reportedly broke an endurance record for drones in 2023 with a 75-hour (three day) flight. To stay up that long, it uses a combination of solar panels, batteries, and energy-efficient, AI-controlled flight patterns inspired by birds.

Kraus Hamdani was cagey about contract details, citing wartime security needs, and the contract is an Indefinite Quantity, Indefinite Delivery (IDIQ) award that effectively allows Air Forces Central to buy as few or as many drones as it likes, up to the $270 million ceiling. Even so, the AFCENT award clearly dwarfs what was previously Kraus Hamdani’s largest publicly announced contract, a $20 million award from the Army in 2024 to supply the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force and Joint Special Operations Command.

The drone has been bought in smaller quantities by the Army, Navy, and oil companies, and it’s featured in multiple military exercises from Morocco to the Philippines.

“We’ve proven ourselves to the warfighter across multiple AORs [Areas of Responsibility], the Pacific being the primary one — we’ve been working with the INDOPACOM region for six years,” CEO and co-founder Fatema Hamdani told Breaking Defense. “We’ve also had dual-use [customers], Petroleum Development Oman has been flying our aircraft for over three years, in the harshest conditions, flying thousands of kilometers every month.”

The company also provides software to the Ukrainian military and updates its algorithms based on combat data from the war against Russia, said co-founder and CTO Stefan Kraus: “We’re learning from Ukraine constantly, because our engineers contribute the most prolific widely used autopilot in the world, which is flying in Ukraine.”

The contract with AFCENT, the Air Force component of Central Command, was in the works before the Trump Administration launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. But its announcement comes just days after US forces concluded a daring and costly rescue of two aircrew whose F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down by Iran. The US has also lost at least 16 MQ-9 Reapers to accidents or Iranian fire, CBS News has reported. This level of attrition — against a badly battered mid-tier power — is likely to reinforce the Pentagon’s growing interest in less expensive drones.