Neros Technologies announced on Wednesday, September 30, that the Department of War has ordered 14,000 drones and explosive payloads from it through Gauntlet II of the Drone Dominance Program, an award the Torrance, California, company values at more than $100 million. The order follows Neros’s first place in the Close Quarters Battle mission and third place in Deep Strike at Fort Carson, Colorado, in August.

The order covers Archer AI, Neros’s 10-inch FPV drone with terminal guidance that flies itself to an operator-selected target, and a 5-inch Archer built for urban and indoor fighting. Neros also received a second bonus order from Gauntlet I, 800 drones taken from competitors that missed their production deadline.

At the Gauntlet II unit prices the program set, $3,500 and $4,500, 14,000 drones cost between $49 million and $63 million.

Warheads Fill The Gap In Neros’s $100 Million Order

Explosive payloads are the only item besides drones that Neros names in the award, and the program’s $4,500 Deep Strike price excluded weaponization. Even if all 14,000 were Deep Strike drones, at least $37 million of the $100 million-plus sits outside the airframes’ list price.

Neros’s announcement gives no breakdown, but the total works out to more than $7,100 per drone (a figure the program’s price sheet never shows). Swarm Defense, fifth in Deep Strike, announced a 4,000-drone order last week with a minimum value of $25 million including munitions and control software, The Defense Post reported, or about $6,250 a drone. Tectonic Defense, which reported the 14,000 figure on September 23 before Neros confirmed it, had put the order at about $70 million on drone price alone. The program raised the Deep Strike price to $5,000 and cut Close Quarters Battle to $3,000 when it opened Phase 3 on September 28.

The quantity matches the order ladder in the program’s April Request for Solutions, which set 8,000 drones for first place and 6,000 for third in each mission area, Aviation Tech Today reported. Neros does not say how the 14,000 split between the two Archers, only that the department is prioritizing Archer AI, the model it launched with its $250 million Series C in August.

The shipment is also the first mass delivery of drones built to APEX, or Adaptive Payload Exchange, an open-source standard Neros introduced so operators can swap conventional, fiber and repeater payloads in the field.

Neros Collected 800 Drones Its Gauntlet I Rivals Did Not Ship

The 800-drone award is Neros’s second Gauntlet I bonus. Neros delivered and got acceptance for its full 2,400-drone March order by July, earning a first bonus of 2,000 drones, Inside Unmanned Systems reported. That brings its Gauntlet I total to 5,200.

Most of the field did not keep pace. Gauntlet I required the 11 winners to deliver half of 22,320 drones within two and a half months and the rest within four and a half. By August 25, 13,440 had arrived, about 60 percent. Only Neros, Ukrainian Defense Drones and Griffon Aerospace had delivered their full orders, and UDD’s batch was still awaiting inspection, as were deliveries from Skycutter and ModalAI. Inside Unmanned Systems traced the shortfall to NDAA-compliant motors, batteries, sensors and chips.

Neros’s announcement does not say which competitors lost the 800 drones. CEO Soren Monroe-Anderson called the program a test of whether companies can build good drones and “produce them in massive quantities with short notice.” He also says Neros is the only manufacturer with more than one Gauntlet I bonus. When I wrote up the Gauntlet II results on September 19, Skycutter, the March champion, had dropped to fourth, and its Gauntlet I order was one of two the program had flagged in July as neither ramping nor shipping.

DroneXL’s Take

The 800 drones are the best news in this release, and they have nothing to do with Neros’s score. The program took drones from companies that did not ship and gave them to one that did. That is merit-based competition, with delivery counted as merit.

Neros was building about 1,200 Archers a week in August, so a 14,000-drone order is under three months of output. The Gauntlet I stragglers were still short of finishing March’s order in late August. Any of them that wants a Gauntlet III slot must first clear the 400-drone delivery gate the program opened Monday, in about two months. Delivery is now the score that decides who stays in this program.

Sources: Neros Technologies, PR Newswire, Inside Unmanned Systems, The Defense Post, Tectonic Defense, Aviation Tech Today.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.