U.S. Navy hires small firm for drone-mimicking planes

The U.S. Navy has awarded KestrelX, a small Florida-based aviation company, a contract worth up to $9,987,285 to supply low-observable target aircraft and engineering support for Navy and Department of War training exercises.

The Navy did not obligate any funds when it signed the deal, and will instead pay KestrelX as it issues individual task orders. Work will be split across the company’s Lake Mary, Florida headquarters (60%), Driggs, Idaho (20%) and New Bern, North Carolina (20%). Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division at Lakehurst, New Jersey, awarded the contract without competition, and it covers fleet exercises, ship training and aircrew training, along with flight operations, technical integration and equipment support tied to those events.

The award falls under a Small Business Innovation Research program topic called “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Cruise Missile Threat Replication Aircraft.” KestrelX first won SBIR funding for that same work from the U.S. Air Force in 2021, a contract worth about $725,000. This week’s Navy award represents a Phase III follow-on, extending the company’s threat-replication work to a second military branch.

KestrelX was founded by Don Moseley, a former Navy F-14 Tomcat and F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who later served as a developmental test pilot for the F/A-18 at Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 after graduating from Navy Test Pilot School. Moseley has said the idea for the company took shape in 2019, while he was flying an adversary jet at the Nevada Test and Training Range and watched an F-117A stealth fighter pulled out of storage to serve as a low-observable adversary aircraft in the same exercise.

The company’s aircraft have since stood in for real-world threats in several military exercises. At Northern Strike 24-2 in Michigan, KestrelX flew two small JSX-2 microjets built by Sonex Aircraft out of Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center. More recently, at Sentry South 26.1 off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, the company flew two Risen KX-2 propeller aircraft, which it describes as the world’s fastest ultralight, to replicate Iranian-designed Shahed-136 loitering drones for U.S. forces practicing detection and intercept tactics.

The Navy’s new contract specifies low-observable aircraft, a step beyond the microjets and propeller planes KestrelX has flown in past exercises. The Navy has not said which aircraft in the company’s current or future lineup will meet that requirement, nor has it disclosed how many training events the contract is expected to cover before it expires in 2028.