DARPA Aims to Fit Commercial Drones With Autonomous Capabilities in 3-Month Intervals

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency aims to collaborate with contractors to ensure U.S.-owned drones feature state-of-the-art autonomy capabilities, aiming to progress from program announcement to contract awarding in 70 business days.

Under the Rapid Experimental Missionized Autonomy program, the agency aims to develop drone autonomy capability for transition in one-month intervals, fitting most commercially available and small military drones used on the battlefield.

Besides the drone-autonomy adapter interface, the program also aims to develop mission-specific autonomy software to be developed at three-month intervals to ensure new and improved autonomy capabilities for commercial drones, DARPA said.

REMA Program Manager Lael Rudd that the program aims to demonstrate that it is possible to accelerate the process it takes from conceptualizing an idea to technology development.

The agency announced in February 2024 that it is working with Anduril and RTX on the DA2 interface for use by groups 1 to 3 stock commercial and military unmanned aerial vehicles. It also tapped Leidos, Northrop Grumman and SoarTech to upgrade drones from remotely piloted operations to autonomous mission execution using the DA2 interface.