U.S. orders 60,000 attack drones from nine companies

The U.S. Department of War is preparing orders for 60,000 small attack drones from nine companies after the second round of its Drone Dominance Program, with Perennial Autonomy and Neros each set to receive the maximum initial order of 8,000 units.

The Defense Innovation Unit, which runs the program with the Test Resource Management Center, said orders are now in the works following Gauntlet II, a month-long flyoff held in August 2026 at Fort Carson, Colorado. Perennial Autonomy took the top spot in the Deep Strike mission area with 80.1 points, while Neros led the Close Quarters Battle category with 88.1 points, according to the program’s published leaderboard.

“Congratulations to all the winners. Now, it’s time to deliver,” the Defense Innovation Unit wrote in announcing the results.

The orders are split evenly between the two mission areas, with 30,000 drones in each, and scale with each company’s ranking. In Deep Strike, Hyperscale placed second and is in line for 7,000 drones, followed by Neros with 6,000, Skycutter with 5,000 and Swarm Defense Technologies with 4,000. In Close Quarters Battle, ORQA US placed second with 7,000, followed by XTEND with 6,000, Vector with 5,000 and ModalAI with 4,000. Neros is the only company to place in both categories, bringing its combined allocation to 14,000 drones, and final quantities will be set when contracts are awarded.

Gauntlet II tested the drones on a find-fix-finish mission, meaning locating a target, confirming it and striking it. Deep Strike lanes required drones to hit targets from 15 km (9.3 miles) away, while Close Quarters Battle lanes tested performance in confined spaces such as buildings, with part of the testing repeated at night. Additional lanes evaluated controlled strikes and electronic warfare performance, with the drones flown against counter-drone systems designed to jam or defeat them.

Companies were scored on more than flight results. The final rankings combined Gauntlet II performance with evaluations from military operators who flew the systems and an assessment of each company’s ability to produce drones at scale and secure its supply chain.

The second round raised the bar considerably on range. Gauntlet I, held at Fort Benning, Georgia, in February and March 2026, sent 25 companies through testing that included strikes at about 10 km (6.2 miles), and the Defense Innovation Unit said only 24% of drones in that round reached 10 km. That first round produced orders for about 30,000 one-way attack drones worth roughly $150 million, with London-based Skycutter topping the leaderboard and Neros in second place.

The program grew out of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s July 2025 memo on military drone dominance, which called for every U.S. Army squad to be armed with small one-way attack drones by the end of fiscal 2026. The Department of War plans to spend about $1.1 billion across four phases of the program, which is designed to build a U.S.-based industrial base for low-cost expendable drones. Officials said in testimony earlier this year that Phase II would exclude systems using motors or batteries from so-called covered countries, a requirement aimed at Chinese components.

Several of the Gauntlet II winners have already shared details of their orders. Vector said it received orders for up to 5,000 drone systems along with its high-voltage electronic safe and arm device, which lets operators arm drones with different munitions, and XTEND said it delivered 120 STRIKER systems for testing, as The Defence Blog reported when the Close Quarters Battle scores were released.

Officials plan to follow Gauntlet II with Gauntlet 2.5, focused on bomber drones that drop munitions, and Gauntlet 3 is scheduled to begin about six months after Gauntlet II.