The U.S. military just placed one of its boldest bets yet on the future of warfare. After a grueling two-week competition at Fort Benning, Georgia, the Pentagon has named 11 winners of its Drone Dominance Program’s first Gauntlet and ordered 30,000 one-way attack drones worth $150 million. A British-Ukrainian partnership stunned the field by claiming the top spot with a near-perfect score.
What Is the Drone Dominance Program?
The Drone Dominance initiative follows a July 2025 memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth titled “Unleashing US Military Drone Dominance,” which called for every Army squad to be armed with small, one-way attack drones by the end of fiscal 2026.1
The Pentagon launched its $1.1 billion Drone Dominance Program in late 2025, setting a goal to buy and equip forces with more than 300,000 domestically produced, weaponized small drones by 2027.2
The program is split into four phases, each starting with a Gauntlet challenge. Over the course of three succeeding Gauntlets, running through 2027, the Pentagon plans to further whittle down the field from 12 to five ultimate winners.3 Think of it as a survival tournament for drone makers, where only the best rise to the top.
The key numbers at a glance:
| Phase | Estimated Drones | Target Price Per Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Phase I (Gauntlet I) | 30,000 | $5,000 |
| Phase II (Gauntlet II, Aug 2026) | 50,000 to 60,000 | Lower than Phase I |
| Phase III | TBD | TBD |
| Phase IV (Final) | 150,000 | ~$2,000 |
Last year’s reconciliation law set aside $2.5 billion for the domestic drone industry.4 Just over $1 billion of that goes specifically to the Group 1 FPV competition that Gauntlet I is part of.4
Pentagon Drone Dominance Program Gauntlet winners one-way attack drones
How the Gauntlet Worked at Fort Benning
The tests involved about 100 servicemembers, largely from the Army, Marine Corps or the special operations community, who evaluated the drones in simulated combat situations, such as sending a drone out 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to hit a specific target.1
Operators were only given two hours of training for each unmanned aerial system.1 That detail matters. Two hours is barely enough time to read a manual. The Pentagon wanted to know which drones a soldier could pick up and use in a real fight with almost no preparation.
Companies were scored based on Gauntlet I performance, military operator evaluations, and production and supply chain capabilities.5 The soldiers then answered a simple but powerful question: Would you take this drone to war?
“The Gauntlet I leaderboard is not a statement about the best drones in the industry, or even the best drones in America. It is a snapshot of how the invited vendors performed against the mission vignettes designed by the warfighters. We are not buying drones based on paper requirements. We are buying drones based on how they performed in the missions,” officials wrote on the program’s website.6
Skycutter and Ukraine’s SkyFall Dominate the Leaderboard
The biggest surprise of Gauntlet I came from across the Atlantic.
UK drone company Skycutter has been selected by the US Pentagon in Gauntlet I, topping the list of the final 11 companies. Skycutter submitted a bid in partnership with Ukrainian tech company SkyFall, with which it has been working since 2022, with a modified Shrike 10 Fiber first-person view drone.7
Skycutter achieved an unprecedented score of 99.3 out of 100. The margin between Skycutter and the runner-up, Neros, stood at 11.8 points, a statistically significant variance in a field where the subsequent seven competitors were separated by fewer than three points.8
The Shrike 10 Fiber is a fiber-optic drone, meaning it stays connected to its operator through a physical cable rather than radio signals. It is notable that a fiber-optic drone led the field in a competition dominated by radio-controlled UAS. In Ukraine, fiber-optic systems have proved difficult to defeat using electronic attack because they retain high-quality control links and video feeds throughout the engagement.9
Skycutter’s technology came in third place in the “military operator evaluation” portion of the scoring, behind Napatree and Neros. Skycutter was also ranked highly for its “strong” production capabilities. It came in first place in the “long-distance strike” mission category and second place in the “urban strike” mission category.6
The full top 11 Gauntlet I leaderboard:
- Skycutter (UK/Ukraine partnership) — 99.3
- Neros — 87.5
- Napatree — 80.3
- ModalAI — 77.7
- Auterion — 77
- Ukrainian Defense Drones — 72.9
- Griffon Aerospace
- Nokturnal AI
- Halo Aeronautics
- Ascent Aerosystems
- Farage Precision
In second place is the Neros Archer, a system already inducted in 2025 by the Marine Corps and then by the Army. Archer is already the Pentagon’s first FPV one-way attack UAS to be purchased at Ukraine-level prices.9
Third-place finisher Napatree is known for its Merops anti-drone interceptor which has already racked up over 1,000 drone kills in Ukraine.10
Also notable: Kratos SRE and Teal Drones, the only two publicly traded companies in the field, do not appear in the top 11. Both had been widely watched by investors.4
Why This Competition Matters Right Now
This is not a peacetime exercise. It is happening against the backdrop of active combat.
On February 28, CENTCOM’s Task Force Scorpion Strike used the LUCAS drone in combat for the first time against Iranian targets during Operation Epic Fury.4 LUCAS is a Shahed-136 reverse-engineered by Arizona-based SpektreWorks. It costs $35,000 per unit.4
The drones coming out of Gauntlet I are being built for a fraction of that cost. The winning Shrike drone is reportedly produced for around $1,500 in its fiber-optic, night-operations subvariant, or as little as $300 for the cost-minimized daytime variant.9 Both figures are already below the Pentagon’s long-term target of $2,000 per unit.
The Pentagon is also learning hard lessons from Ukraine’s pace of innovation. “You’re talking about six months as being expedited scheduling,” said Sen. Shaheen, who recently visited Ukrainian drone producers in Odesa. “What they were talking about in Ukraine was iterating those drones every two weeks because of warfare.”1
Phase II begins in August with a target of 50,000 to 60,000 additional drones, and a harder test that includes GPS denial, communications jamming, and electronic warfare.4 That tougher testing environment will thin the field further and push companies to build systems that can survive the most hostile battlefield conditions.
What Comes Next for the U.S. Drone Arsenal
Skycutter, finishing first, will receive the largest order of 2,500 units, with the remaining allocations distributed based on final rankings in the first gauntlet.11 Winning vendors have five months to deliver.4
The Defense Department is kicking off plans this month to deliver batches of small drones to roughly 17 military units.2 These are not going to sit in warehouses. They are heading straight to the front lines of readiness.
Hundreds of companies have applied to be part of the Drone Dominance Program, according to Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael.6 That massive interest tells us something about where the defense industry is heading. Small, cheap, disposable drones are no longer an experiment. They are becoming the backbone of modern combat.
Neros’ longer-term vision is to build a factory that can produce one million drones per year with the U.S. Defense Department as its primary customer.12 That level of ambition signals just how seriously industry is taking this shift.
The Drone Dominance Program is more than a procurement initiative. It is the Pentagon’s answer to a battlefield reality that Ukraine proved and Iran confirmed. Wars are no longer won only by the most expensive weapons. They are won by whoever can put the most capable, affordable drones in the hands of soldiers the fastest. Whether the U.S. can scale fast enough to match the urgency of today’s threats is the question that keeps defense leaders awake at night. The next Gauntlet in August will push companies even harder, and the stakes, for soldiers in the field and the nation’s security, could not be higher.
Share your thoughts in the comments below. What do you think about the Pentagon’s push for low-cost drone dominance
