DARPA
Every UASFeed story on DARPA — across defense, counter-UAS, industry, commercial, policy, and tech, newest first.
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Tech & Builds
DARPA's Lift Challenge Adds 30+ Teams Ahead of August Vertical-Lift Flyoff in Dayton
DARPA has grown its Lift Challenge to 124 teams from 20+ countries, setting up a $6.5 million heavy vertical-lift flyoff at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, August 2-9, with public finals August 6-9.
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Tech & Builds
DARPA Bets on Nuclear Waste to Give Drones 30-Year Endurance
DARPA's $3.37M "Rads to Watts" award puts Morgan State University in charge of turning Strontium-90 nuclear waste into radiovoltaic power cells aimed at giving drones and satellites decades of untethered flight.
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Tech & Builds
DARPA-Backed SYMPHONEE Program Aims to Turn Nuclear Waste Into Decades-Long Drone Power
A Morgan State-led team is building SYMPHONEE, a Strontium-90 radiovoltaic cell under a $3.37M DARPA contract, targeting over 10 W/kg and decades of unattended power for drones and remote systems.
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Tech & Builds
Dead Zone Autonomy: How Edge AI Keeps Drones Flying When GPS and Comms Disappear
Russian electronic warfare can blank GPS within 5 kilometers of deployment. Shield AI’s president says 99% of military autonomous systems fail under jamming. The solution — running perception, navigation, and targeting entirely on the drone — is now combat-proven.
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Tech & Builds
Optionally Piloted Aircraft: The Platform That Bridges Crewed and Autonomous Flight
Optionally piloted aircraft hold manned airworthiness certificates while enabling fully autonomous operations—closing the regulatory gap that stalls pure UAVs. From proven Afghan cargo resupply missions to DARPA’s autonomous Black Hawk delivered to the Army in 2026, the concept reshapes military logistics and aviation.
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Tech & Builds
Swarm Mesh Networking: The Hidden Architecture Behind Autonomous Drone Coordination
Drone light shows and true autonomous swarms share an airspace but almost nothing else. The decentralized MANET/FANET mesh—multi-hop routing, anti-jamming MARL, GPS-denied positioning—is what separates choreography from genuine collective autonomy, and what DARPA OFFSET and Replicator's $1B are chasing.
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Tech & Builds
Tilt-Rotor, Tailsitter, and Ducted-Fan Drones: The VTOL Hover-Cruise Trade-Off
Every VTOL aircraft must reconcile two contradictory physics demands: hover requires high blade area and tip speed, while forward flight requires the opposite. Tilt-rotor, tailsitter, and ducted-fan architectures each place their bets differently — with lasting consequences for military range and noise compliance.
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Tech & Builds
Shield AI's Hivemind: The AI Pilot Built for GPS-Denied War
Shield AI's Hivemind AI pilot stack has been in continuous combat use since 2018 — from SOCOM building clearances to Ukraine ISR sorties to a live F-16 dogfight with the Air Force Secretary on board.
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Tech & Builds
How Drones Navigate When GPS Is Gone: The Full Toolkit
Russian jamming dropped FPV hit rates from 40–60% to under 30%. Ukraine's response accelerated every GPS-denied navigation technique in the book — from inertial sensors and visual odometry to quantum magnetometers and $50 autonomy modules. Here's how each layer works.
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Tech & Builds
What Makes a Drone Swarm: True Autonomy, Enabling Tech, and the C2 Gap
Most formations called 'drone swarms' aren't—they're centralized fleets, scripted salvos, or teleoperated aircraft. Here's what true swarm autonomy requires, which programs are closest, and why C2 software remains the binding constraint.
