{"id":53211,"date":"2020-07-28T19:56:23","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T19:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2020\/07\/28\/four-companies-will-square-off-to-win-money-to-build-skyborg-drone-prototypes-this-summer\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T23:53:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:53:32","slug":"four-companies-will-square-off-to-win-money-to-build-skyborg-drone-prototypes-this-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/air\/2020\/07\/28\/four-companies-will-square-off-to-win-money-to-build-skyborg-drone-prototypes-this-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"Four companies will square off to win money to build Skyborg drone prototypes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Air Force <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/air\/2020\/05\/20\/more-than-one-company-could-get-cash-to-build-the-air-forces-ai-equipped-skyborg-drone\/\" target=_blank>could narrow the playing field of its Skyborg competition<\/a> by the end of this summer, with plans to dole out awards to one or more companies to begin prototyping an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/air\/2019\/05\/22\/under-skyborg-program-f-35-and-f-15ex-jets-could-control-drone-sidekicks\/\" target=_blank>autonomous combat drone<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last week, the service selected <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/air\/2020\/05\/04\/boeing-rolls-out-australias-first-loyal-wingman-combat-drone\/\" target=_blank>Boeing<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/digital-show-dailies\/paris-air-show\/2019\/06\/17\/us-air-force-looking-to-fast-track-cash-to-kratos-defense-for-additional-valkyrie-drones\/\" target=_blank>Kratos<\/a>, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics to receive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/unmanned\/2020\/07\/23\/four-companies-got-contracts-to-build-the-air-forces-skyborg-drone\/\" target=_blank>indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contracts<\/a> for the Skyborg program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The next step involves the service meeting with the four companies to get a better sense of their proposed aircraft ahead of issuing the first order for prototypes anywhere over the next 60 to 90 days, said Brig. Gen. Dale White, who leads the Air Force\u2019s program office for fighters and advanced aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/it-networks\/2019\/03\/14\/introducing-skyborg-your-new-ai-wingman\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"162\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Capture.JPG_4ed037.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">Introducing Skyborg, your new AI wingman<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">Future Air Force pilots might be getting their own R2-D2-like companion.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How many competitors move on to the next stage of the program is yet to be determined, and will depend on how many drones the Air Force can buy with its available funding. Although each of the four companies\u2019 contracts have a ceiling of $400 million, no money has been awarded yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have a set amount of money. We\u2019re somewhat constrained on dollars early on, but we have a plan in place both for this year and [fiscal] 2021,\u201d White told reporters during a roundtable Tuesday. \u201cThat\u2019s going to largely determine what the unit vehicle cost is going to be. That will determine how many we buy, and it will also determine how many we buy from whom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">White acknowledged that selecting multiple drones would help \u201cpush the bounds\u201d of flight experiments that will start in 2021, as each aircraft differs in design characteristics that could benefit different missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Skyborg \u2014 one of the Air Force Research Laboratory\u2019s three \u201cvanguard\u201d programs that have been tapped as a potential gamechanger \u2014 was conceived as an drone wingman that could use artificial intelligence to autonomously traverse a battlefield, collecting intelligence and sending important information to fighter pilots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At only a couple million dollars per copy, the air vehicles under consideration for Skyborg are considered \u201cattritable,\u201d meaning they are reusable but cheap enough that losses can be tolerated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it will take some time to develop Skyborg from its initial stages, where it will use algorithms to autonomously react to certain conditions, to a more advanced, AI-enabled decision-making process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Air Force identified 15 mission for Skyborg, such as base defense, communications relay or collecting data, White said. Those prospective missions will help inform how the service experiments with the Skyborg prototypes next year, but ultimately user feedback will determine its role on the battlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cUltimately, we are progressively adding to the autonomy and working with the war fighters and getting their feedback on what makes the most sense for the operational employment of these attritable aircraft,\u201d said Brig. Gen. Heather Pringle, AFRL\u2019s commander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Air Force previously said Skyborg could be operational as early as 2023, but White said initial fielding dates have not been decided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat will have to be a discussion inside the larger Air Force,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we\u2019re going to look for operational user input because once we get into those operational experimentation exercises, the war fighter can get pretty excited about what we can do, and then we\u2019ll start making decisions with respect to maturity and how we want to move forward and how quickly we want to field some.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not all the companies that won Skyborg contracts are assured to score orders to build prototypes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":66345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7,160,12,49,36,27,167],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3384],"class_list":["post-53211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-daily-news-roundup","category-industry","category-techwatch","category-newsletters","category-unmanned","category-unmanned-systems"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"6VY4HBUJEVDA3OSXYB4JMGG52U","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2020\/07\/28\/four-companies-will-square-off-to-win-money-to-build-skyborg-drone-prototypes-this-summer\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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