The Defense Department (DOD) has named five companies as winners of its recent Lethality Prize Challenge under the Drone Dominance Program (DDP), positioning them as preferred vendors to identify and scale advanced payloads capable of complementing the rapidly growing production of small drones.
Under the Trump administration, the DOD was rebranded as the War Department.
The five winners were Bravo Ordnance, Kela Defense, Kraken Kinetics, Mountain Horse, and Northrop Grumman. The competition went live on April 1 and concluded on April 14.
According to the competition announcement, DOD wanted lethal payload solutions for Group 1 unmanned aerial systems (UAS), a category that includes small drones weighing 20 pounds or less.
Officials defined a lethal payload as the integrated combination of a warhead and its associated electronic safe and arm device or electromechanical safe and arm device, along with its communication and interface systems.
“Solutions must be scalable to match the rapid growth of Drone Dominance platforms and cost-effective to enable mass production and fielding,” the government wrote. “At this point, the lethal payload system represents a significant portion of the total system cost; therefore, affordability and manufacturability are critical design considerations.”
Awardees will be presented to all DDP Gauntlet II small UAS vendors as part of a preferred munitions solutions list. Each winning company will also receive a $10,000 cash prize.
The challenge is part of the DOD’s broader $1 billion DDP initiative focused on the rapid deployment of more than 200,000 low-cost UAS by 2027. The initiative is structured in four phases, dubbed “Gauntlets,” designed to evaluate vendors’ operational performance, production capacity, and scalability.
Gauntlet I, held in February at Fort Benning, Ga., resulted in orders for 30,000 drones. Gauntlet II is expected later this year.