U.S. Marine Corps evaluates family of Perennial Autonomy drones

A U.S. Marine Corps division has watched an American-made interceptor drone hunt down and destroy one of its own sister drones in a live demonstration, proving out technology the Corps is about to put in the hands of ordinary infantry units within weeks.

The 2nd Marine Division’s Unmanned Systems Center of Excellence completed several days of integrated training with Perennial Autonomy, a defense technology company that builds AI-enabled drone systems, according to a report by 1st Lt. Matthew Hart of 2nd Marine Division published. The training, conducted at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, while the division’s headquarters supported the broader Marine Air Ground Task Force Warfighting Exercise nearby, marked the first time any Marine Corps unit has worked directly with the company.

Three systems anchored the demonstration, each representing a different piece of the small-drone puzzle the Marine Corps is racing to solve. Marines flew the Bumblebee V1, a quadcopter, and the Hornet, a mid-range strike drone, showing off reconnaissance, attack, and payload-dropping capabilities across both platforms.

The centerpiece of the event, though, was the AS-3 Merops interceptor, a fixed-wing drone purpose-built to chase down and destroy other drones in flight, including the kind of Iranian-designed Shahed 136 one-way attack drones that have become a signature weapon of Russia’s air campaign against Ukraine. Perennial Autonomy demonstrated exactly how capable that interceptor has become by using a Merops to shoot down one of its own Hornet strike drones mid-flight, a live-fire proof of concept that doubled as a real-time advertisement for the system’s precision.

The Defence Blog has reported that the Merops system, built around its AS-3 Surveyor interceptor, was developed under Project Eagle, an initiative backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and built substantially by Ukrainian engineers responding directly to the pressure of Russia’s Shahed drone campaign, with each Surveyor costing roughly $15,000 to produce. Ukrainian forces have credited the system with more than 4,000 intercepted drones in combat, the same figure cited in the Marine Corps training report, a track record that has already pushed the system into service well beyond Ukraine’s borders. Poland and Lithuania have both moved to field Merops along NATO’s eastern flank, with Lithuania’s defense ministry announcing an order for 48 interceptor drones earlier this year, and NATO has incorporated the system into broader alliance air defense planning as cheap drone threats continue to outpace what traditional air defense systems were built to handle.

The Hornet strike drone, also built by Perennial Autonomy, carries its own combat record into Twentynine Palms as a fixed-wing, one-way attack drone that uses AI-assisted targeting to classify and engage vehicles autonomously during the final phase of its flight, a feature that makes it resistant to the kind of electronic jamming that can blind remotely piloted systems relying on a constant human-controlled link. The Defence Blog has documented Hornet strikes against Russian logistics convoys in Ukraine at ranges exceeding 100 kilometers (62 miles), and U.S. forces have steadily expanded the drone’s footprint across American military exercises, deploying it in Lithuania, Poland, and Germany before carrying it into the Indo-Pacific during the Balikatan 2026 exercise in the Philippines, where Hornet drones destroyed targets simulating Chinese amphibious assault vehicles.

Col. Thomas Short, the air officer for 2nd Marine Division, explained why getting hands-on time with the systems now matters so much to a unit that has not yet received them.

“2nd Marine Division is the first Marine Corps unit to work directly with Perennial Autonomy,” Short said. “This experience was invaluable as the Division looks to receive these drones in the future and work with Perennial Autonomy testing and collecting data before they are actually implemented as weapons systems.”

The Department of War is weeks away from receiving Perennial Autonomy drones on a notably tight timeline, and the company met with Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith in May to discuss how the service could integrate and refine the systems to fit its specific requirements, according to Short. That deal traces back to a $500 million Pentagon contract Perennial Autonomy secured on May 19, 2026, through Joint Interagency Task Force 401, an award covering both the Merops interceptor and the Bumblebee quadcopter and signaling the scale at which the Pentagon now intends to field this family of systems across the joint force.

Master Sgt. Patrick Harrington, director of the Unmanned Systems Center of Excellence, described the training as a rare head start on equipment his team will soon be responsible for certifying and fielding across the division.

“This training was an incredible opportunity for my team to get hands-on experience as we prepare to receive Perennial Autonomy drones and work them into the division,” Harrington said.

The 2nd Marine Division frames this effort as part of a broader push toward force modernization and naval integration, fielding autonomous systems the Corps says will let it support the joint force with credible, combat-ready capabilities meant to deter aggression rather than simply react to it after a fight has already started. The training drew on support from the II Marine Expeditionary Force Office of Science, Technology and Experimentation alongside the division’s own operations staff, reflecting how deeply intertwined drone testing has become with the rest of the Corps’ modernization apparatus rather than existing as a standalone side project.