Pentagon orders 14,000 attack drones from Neros

The U.S. Department of War has ordered 14,000 attack drones and explosive payloads from California drone maker Neros after the company finished near the top of both events in the Pentagon’s latest Drone Dominance competition, a deal Neros values at more than $100 million.

Neros announced the order on Sept. 30 and said it had also received a second bonus order for 800 more drones from the program’s first round, reassigned from competitors that could not meet their production deadlines. The Pentagon has not published the value of either order.

The Gauntlet II order is split between two versions of the company’s Archer drone. Archer AI is a 10-inch first-person-view attack drone, a size class named for its propellers, with terminal guidance that lets it fly itself to a target the operator has picked, which helps when jamming cuts the link to the pilot, while Archer 5 is a smaller variant built for close-quarters fighting in towns and inside buildings.

“We’re proud to be the only manufacturer to have placed top three in both Gauntlet II mission sets, and are already fulfilling this next tranche of orders,” Neros said in a post on X.

Gauntlet II, held in August at Fort Carson, Colorado, tested 23 drone designs from 19 companies across 1,858 sorties flown by military operators, and the program’s leaderboard now shows 60,000 drones ordered, split evenly between its two events. In deep strike, Perennial Autonomy, the drone company backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, won with 80.1 points and an 8,000-drone order, followed by Hyperscale with 7,000, Neros with 6,000, Skycutter with 5,000 and Swarm Defense Technologies with 4,000. In close-quarters battle, Neros won with 88.1 points and 8,000 drones, ahead of ORQA US with 7,000, XTEND Reality with 6,000, Vector with 5,000 and ModalAI with 4,000.

Neros’s combined 14,000 drones account for nearly a quarter of the 60,000 total, well ahead of the 8,000 ordered from Perennial Autonomy, the next-largest single order.

Neros’s figure of more than $100 million is higher than the program’s own prices suggest. At the Gauntlet II unit prices of $3,500 and $4,500, 14,000 drones would cost between $49 million and $63 million, DroneXL calculated, and Neros has not explained the difference, though its order also covers explosive payloads.

The 800-drone bonus comes from a problem that has dogged the program’s first round. Gauntlet I, held at Fort Benning, Georgia, earlier this year, produced orders for about 30,000 drones from 11 companies, which had to deliver half within two and a half months and the rest within four and a half. By August, only three of the 11 had finished, as most struggled to find motors, sensors, batteries and chips that meet U.S. rules barring certain foreign parts, Inside Unmanned Systems reported.

Neros was the first to finish, completing its 2,400-drone order in July and earning a 2,000-drone bonus, and the new 800-drone award brings its Gauntlet I total to 5,200 drones. The company was building about 1,200 Archers a week in August, the same month it raised $250 million at a $2.5 billion valuation.

Drone Dominance is a $1.1 billion, four-round Pentagon effort to buy cheap one-way attack drones in large numbers and push U.S. manufacturers to produce them at scale, with each round pairing field testing by troops with fixed-price orders and tight delivery deadlines.

The program opened its third round on Sept. 28 with $450 million for about 60,000 drones and an option for up to 40,000 more, and companies that want to compete must first deliver a 400-drone order within about two months.