Pentagon Plans Drone 'Swarm Forge'
The US Department of Defense is preparing a high‑stakes ‘Swarm Forge’ program to develop and test large, coordinated drone swarms as AI-driven warfare becomes a strategic priority — alongside new sensor‑fusion missile‑defense projects and next‑gen fighters. Countries from the US to India are rapidly fielding resilient, easy-to-produce drones and countermeasures such as portable anti‑drone lasers, shifting procurement and R&D toward swarms, EW resistance, and integrated battlefield autonomy. (defensescoop.com) (19fortyfive.com) (stocktitan.net)
The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office issued a formal solicitation for the Swarm Forge effort as one of seven “pace‑setting projects” named in the Department of War’s Artificial Intelligence Strategy released Jan. 12, 2026. (defensescoop.com 1) (defensescoop.com 2) The Swarm Forge notice requires demonstrations of heterogenous, multi‑vendor unmanned systems at TRL 6+ and explicitly asks teams to show end‑to‑end autonomy across mission sets including aerial ISR and “Find, Fix, Finish,” with a minimum demonstrator size of four UAS. (tradewindai.com) Auterion says it executed a live‑fire test at Camp Blanding in Florida in mid‑January 2026 where a single operator used Skynode hardware and the Nemyx swarm engine to task three EFP‑armed drones that struck three separate targets, a demonstration the company positions as a Swarm Forge preview. (auterion.com) Pentagon reporting and industry outlets describe a roughly $100 million competitive program element aimed at accelerating swarm concepts and field experiments to shift the force away from a one‑operator‑per‑drone model. (defenseone.com) Sensor‑fusion and missile‑warning work tied to the same modernization push includes the Space Force’s FORGE ground system, which officials say will ingest legacy DSP data for improved tracking, and SciTec’s awarded FORGE EOS work valued at about $259 million for missile‑warning and tracking deliveries. (ssc.spaceforce.mil 1) (ssc.spaceforce.mil 2) Procurement for counter‑UAS is moving toward portable directed‑energy and EW solutions, illustrated by NUBURU’s March 2026 proof‑of‑concept for a portable laser dazzler and its announcement of an initial Asia‑Pacific counter‑drone order valued at roughly $250,000 amid industry forecasts of a ~$20 billion global counter‑UAS market by 2030. (businesswire.com)
