Shotgun-armed drone gets Pentagon green light

An armed, reusable drone that fires 40 mm grenades and 12-gauge shotgun rounds and then flies back to be reloaded has been cleared for purchase and use across the U.S. military, after Skyborne Technologies’ Cerberus MI was added to the U.S. Department of War’s Blue UAS Cleared List, the company announced on Oct. 26, 2026.

The listing means U.S. military units can buy and fly the Cerberus MI without an exception to policy, after an independent assessment found that the platform meets the Blue UAS standard for cybersecurity, supply chain and foreign ownership, control or influence, as well as the National Defense Authorization Act requirements that bar certain foreign-made components, and the list itself is managed by the Defense Contract Management Agency.

Cerberus MI is a Group 2 small unmanned aircraft that weighs 18 kg (39.7 pounds), can be carried by troops, and flies for roughly 35 minutes with a weapon fitted, and Skyborne says the airframe was designed from the start to absorb the recoil of direct-fire weapons rather than adapted from a commercial drone.

It carries two interchangeable weapon payloads, the HAVOC 40 mm low-velocity grenade launcher and the CHAOS 12-gauge shotgun, both of which use standard ammunition, while Skyborne’s onboard EXITUS AI targeting software combines electro-optical, infrared and laser rangefinder data to calculate firing solutions and support engagements from more than 300 meters (984 feet) away, with a human operator making the decision to fire.

The company is pitching the drone as an alternative to the one-way attack and FPV strike drones already on the Blue UAS list, which are destroyed when they hit a target, saying Cerberus MI can return from a mission, reload and fly again, giving units more shots from the same aircraft at a lower cost per shot.

“We’ve always believed that affordable mass isn’t just about building cheaper drones. It’s about delivering more effects from the same platform,” said Adrian Dudok, chief executive of Skyborne Technologies USA.

Skyborne, which was founded in 2014 and operates in Virginia and in Brisbane, Australia, has been working on armed drones for years, and an earlier version of the aircraft, the Cerberus GL, live-fired five 40 mm grenade rounds in front of U.S. Army personnel during the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment in late 2019.

The company has since expanded into ground robots, and in October 2025 it unveiled the CODiAQ, a four-legged robot armed with the same HAVOC 40 mm launcher, which Skyborne said is meant to work together with the Cerberus MI and was being evaluated by U.S. government partners.

“Cerberus MI was engineered as a reusable platform with a modular architecture that allows the capability to evolve over time. From expanding direct-fire weapon integrations to advancing autonomy and AI through our EXITUS software, our focus has been on building a system that can adapt to emerging operational requirements without continually replacing the underlying hardware,” said Michael Creagh, chief executive of Skyborne Technologies APAC.