Two California-based startups took the top spots in the latest phase of the Drone Dominance competition, a Pentagon effort to find companies that can produce high-quality, low-cost commercial drones at scale.
According to the competition’s leaderboard, Neros Technologies scored highest in the confined-environment testing category. Perennial Autonomy claimed the top spot in “deep-strike” testing, in which operators launched attacks beyond the range of enemy defenses.
The Pentagon uses the companies’ rankings to determine how many drones to buy, meaning higher-scoring companies receive larger orders. In total, the department ordered 14,000 drones from Neros — which also ranked third in deep-strike testing — and 8,000 from Perennial.
Neros, founded by competitive drone racers in 2023, identified its winning design as the Archer AI drone. The company said the 10-inch model was “built with Terminal Guidance functionality that allows the drone to fly itself to an operator-selected target, a critical feature in the comms-denied environments military operators face today.”
In a statement, Soren Monroe-Anderson, Neros’ chief executive and co-founder, called the Archer “highly modular and easily adapted to end-user needs.”
by Defense News – Neros, Perennial Autonomy lead in Pentagon’s drone competition
