The Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit announced four contracts awarded after a tender under the ARTEMIS program. According to an official statement published on the U.S. Department of Defense website on Friday, March 14, the following contractors were selected for the production of prototype drones.
Two of them are American companies, Dragoon and Aerovironment, the latter particularly known for its Switchblade-series loitering munitions. Another two are from Ukraine — their names are not disclosed for security reasons, only noted that they will work together with American software developers Swan and Auterion, respectively, Defense News reports.
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The Artemis project was launched in 2024 to evaluate prospects of acquiring long-range precision strike capability using affordable one-way drones, it was initiated in response to requests from the European and Indo-Pacific Commands. For that, the U.S. Department of Defense received about $35 million to implement the program.
The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) said it took them only four months from defining the problem to conducting a tender, demonstration flights, etc., In total, they had evaluated 165 proposals and settled on 16 most promising concepts, demonstrated in December.
Subsequently, the shortlist was reduced to four companies with flight-ready systems, including two from Ukraine. From now on, DIU emphasizes, the contestants will need to fit within an "aggressive timeline" of testing and integration to test demonstrate their prototypes by the end of May 2025.
With Artemis, the innovation hub aims to acquire a ground-launched strike drone with a range of 50 to 300 km, low-altitude flight, multiple payload options, and operate in "contested electromagnetic environments," i.e. where there's no GPS signal.
Trent Emeneker, the coordinator of this program at DIU, told Defense News a few interesting details. He said, despite the target system range of 50 to 300 km, in the end they chose two models operating within 100 km and two more exceeding 1,000 km.
The cost of smaller drones should be less than $20,000 apiece as per preliminary estimates, the larger ones up to $70,000. The final figure will depend partly on the payload and the total number of drones ordered.
In that regard, there is no definite information yet on how many drones the Pentagon is planning to purchase within the project, although DIU is aiming for "mass deployment." It will also depend on the manufacturers' capacity. According to Emeneker, one of the selected Ukrainian companies can produce some 200 drones a month.
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