DIU tapped the two-year-old startup to plan sustainment for US Army Europe and Africa, starting with medical resupply and casualty evacuation for the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative.
A Kansas City-launched firm cleared a gate in the Pentagon's search for a container that launches, recovers and refits drone fleets with a crew of two, the bottleneck sitting between the Army's million-drone plan and the air.
Mach Industries' Atlas is a hybrid-electric, runway-independent strike drone being developed under DIU's RIMES program to carry 1,000-pound munitions 1,400 nautical miles from destroyer decks and austere sites — and come back to rearm.
A June 29 memo hands a single "drone czar" directive and contracting authority over most US unmanned programs, from small quadcopters to sea robots, as Washington races to close a production gap it is losing on volume.
A three-year-old startup just won the Pentagon's bet to put a 1,400-nautical-mile strike drone on the deck of a destroyer, no flight deck or runway required.