Neros Technologies is the only company on both leaderboards the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Program posted this week for Gauntlet II, the second round of the Department of War’s $1.1 billion contest to buy cheap one-way attack drones by the hundred thousand. Neros won the close quarters battle mission outright with 88.1 points and finished third in deep strike with 69.8. Nine other companies placed on one board or the other.
Perennial Autonomy, the company former Google CEO Eric Schmidt started as White Stork to build drone interceptors for Ukraine, topped the deep strike board at 80.1. Skycutter, the British firm that won Gauntlet I in March with 99.3 points, finished fourth in deep strike at 66.6 and did not place in close quarters at all.
The department plans to buy about 60,000 drones from the ten companies, roughly $300 million of orders. Testing ran at Fort Carson, Colorado, in August, and the results went up on the program’s leaderboard on Tuesday, September 15.
Neros Won Close Quarters And Placed Third In Deep Strike
Neros took first in close quarters battle with 88.1 points, ahead of ORQA US, XTEND Reality, Vector and ModalAI. In deep strike it finished third at 69.8, behind Perennial Autonomy and Hyperscale. No other company appears on both leaderboards, so Neros alone is in line for two production orders.
The program’s April Request for Solutions set the order ladder for each mission area at 8,000 drones for first place, then 7,000, 6,000, 5,000 and 4,000 for the next four, Aviation Tech Today reported in July. On that ladder Neros would collect 8,000 close quarters drones and 6,000 deep strike drones, though the program has said quantities are fixed at contract award rather than by leaderboard position.
