DARPA awards Phase 1 contract for Gremlins program

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency awarded Phase 1 contracts on Friday for a program seeking to develop new technologies that will enable aircraft to launch volleys of low-cost, reusable unmanned air systems (UASs) and retrieve them in mid-air.

The systems, called Gremlins, would be used with a mixture of mission payloads in a coordinated manner, providing the military with a variety of options and flexibility in wartime at reduced cost from current standards.

Contracts have been awarded to four teams, including Composite Engineering, Inc.; Dynetics, Inc.; General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc.; and Lockheed Martin Corporation.

“We’ve assembled a motivated group of researchers and developers that we believe could make significant progress toward Gremlins’ vision of delivering distributed airborne capabilities in a robust, responsive and affordable manner,” DARPA Program Manager Dan Patt said. “These teams are exploring different, innovative approaches toward achieving this goal and are rolling up their sleeves for the hard work ahead.”

Phase 1 of the program is designed to develop a proof-of-concept flight demonstration that would validate an air recovery concept of multiple Gremlins. Objectives include launch and recovery techniques, low-cost airframe designs that leverage existing technologies, and high-fidelity analysis with precision digital flight controls and relative navigation.