Exclusive: U.K.-Ukraine duo beats Americans at their own drone game
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Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios
The U.S. launched a killer-drone competition in February. It was won, according to public leaderboards, by a small British company with frontline Ukrainian experience and a manufacturing footprint in Atlanta.
Why it matters: Skycutter's stateside success, after flying well under the radar, is a reminder that:
- Flash does not necessarily signal substance;
- Innovation exists outside the big-money bubbles of Silicon Valley and Washington;
- And the Russia-Ukraine war is influencing the battlefield tech of today and tomorrow.
Driving the news: Skycutter scored an overall 99.3 at the first Gauntlet, an attack drone fly-off at Fort Benning, Georgia. In second was Neros, a California startup, at 87.5.
- "We were nervous going into it, but we performed so exceedingly well compared to the competition," Vincent Gardner, Skycutter's operations director, told Axios. "We just aced every mission profile they gave us."
- That included long-distance and urban strikes.
Zoom in: Skycutter competed with the Shrike 10-F, a 10-inch first-person view (FPV) drone that can be operated via fiber optic cable, which counters electronic jamming and spoofing. The drone is the result of collaboration with SkyFall, a Ukrainian outfit the company has worked closely with in the past.
- "They make one every 23 seconds, 123,000 units per month," Gardner said of SkyFall, "and we redesigned it with them to exclude any Chinese parts or components, which is one of the requirements of the Drone Dominance program."
- "A lot of people came with, I would argue, quite overengineered solutions," he added. "These drones, they're like mechanical wasps."
Context: More than two-dozen companies were invited to participate in Gauntlet I. Among them were Auterion, Firestorm Labs, Performance Drone Works and Teal Drones.
Zoom out: The Defense Department's Drone Dominance push is designed to arm American troops with expendable drones on a massive scale in a few short years.
- Like the Biden-era Replicator initiative, it's a tacit recognition of how ill-prepared the U.S. is to match some combat conditions seen overseas.
- Roughly 75% of casualties in the Russia-Ukraine war are caused by drones.
Follow the money: Skycutter is now on contract for more than 2,500 drones.
- It plans to beef up its U.S. manufacturing in the near term.
The bottom line: "We're using this opportunity, really, to poke our head above the parapet, go fast and accelerate into establishing our own dominance within the drone industrial base in Western markets," Gardner said.
- "This has opened, as you might imagine, a huge amount of doors for us."
