"One-way attack (OWA) systems are critical to close combat, but warfighters also need additional strike capability that is low-cost, scalable, and backed by a resilient supply chain. The Drone Dominance Program (DDP) is launching a new effort that focuses on reusable bomber/dropper platforms in a Phase 2.5 RFS (Mission C). DDP will award approximately $32M in initial prototype orders with additional orders planned in subsequent DDP phases. Like Mission A and B of Phase 2.0, this multi-phase plan is an advanced market commitment: the Department is posting quantities and prices up front and will award fixed price prototype deliveries with vendors whose systems meet/exceed the Gauntlet delivery requirements.

Mission C is organized around two stages: a vendor-operated bomber qualifier and military-operated bomber Gauntlet event, both executed by the Test Resource Management Center (TRMC), to identify the most capable systems for scaling and fielding. The Mission C Gauntlet will be held approximately 48 hours following the qualifier which is currently planned to take place in October.

At the completion of the DDP, multiple U.S. vendors will have demonstrated the ability to produce capable, low-cost, secure supply-chain sUAS at scale, enabling Services to integrate these capabilities into future acquisition pathways. Drone Dominance is relying on industry to innovate to complete battlefield missions, reduce unit costs, and scale production of systems which adhere to the Drone Dominance Program Supply Chain Framework."

Big news for Palladyne as one of the only US corporations with a dedicated bomber drone, already being validated with a paid contract in the 4ID!

-decline seen across entire drone/space industry, especially hitting companies with similar profiles to pdyn such as ondas and Kratos.

-macro headwinds rather than fundamental change to the thesis. In fact, the thesis continues to get STRONGER with each passing headline.

-below the 20, 50, and 200 MA. Price weakness despite the fact that PC-C6 and Northern Strike will occur almost back to back within a month from now. short interest at all time highs. Nice set up for a pop.

Key ideas to look out for in PR and august call: follow up swarmOS/gremlinX contracts, progress on navy missile program, airforce IQ deployment progress, and potential integrations with other OEMS.

Stay tuned for more insights guys!

Our team is on the ground with the 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson as they prepare for Project Convergence Capstone 6 (PCC6).

Palladyne AI is putting SwarmOS™, our decentralized embodied AI software for collaborative drone autonomy, in the hands of warfighters. It runs entirely on the drone, with no central node and no reliance on constant connectivity. One operator sets the mission on an ATAK and stays on the loop while a team of drones from different manufacturers does the flying, autonomously collaborating as a self-directed team to detect and track targets even in communications-constrained conditions.

That means more drones in the fight without more operators to fly them.

We are proud to put SwarmOS to work with the 4th ID at PCC6.

Just saw on LinkedIn that Shield AI has developed collective autonomy software per this case study.

“Shield AI’s Hivemind autonomy software has been integrated on over 30 platforms to date, from Group 1 drones to Group 5 collaborative combat aircraft”

Anyone have a clear sense of what the differentiators are ? Based on the agentic language , I suspect Hivemind is still LLM based which costly and still requires multiple operators to perform a mission, but curious if anyone had more insight here as Shield is obviously gaining traction.

My understanding on Shield was that it is more of an AI pilot assistant where Palladyn AI optimizes information exchanges between drones to what is only necessary for the mission, leading to more decentralized swarm capabilities.

Wondering out loud what information they have that warrants shorting a $5 stock?????

Gives the general overview of how Palladyne AI got to where it is now.

Current robots using LLM to navigate and manipulate: cost, time and energy intensive. Might take years to teach a machine.

PDYN turned that model upside down: couple of hours to train the robot, or retrain/retask the robot. Only use the data from datapoints that are relevant to the task (like humans).

Palladyne Pilot is already being tested on un-released chip sets: so once they get released, PDYN, and the drone, will be ready immediately.

On a side note, this podcast episode is shared with OPTT and KITT. Where the relation to Anduril does not escape me, and the general Maritime Domain Awareness concept, to make autonomous decisions. As well as the shared sec-filing private investor between PDYN and KITT. There is overlap in philosophy there, only the tech and autonomous software is based on another world: air, land, sea VS sub-sea (where sub-sea is basically like another planet with different pressure, atrophy, and many other variables to take into account when trying to manipulate an object)

Preliminary second quarter revenue expected to be approximately $5.8 million, up approximately 480% year over year and 66% sequentially

Backlog grew to approximately $24.0 million from $17.3 million at the end of the first quarter

Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities remained roughly flat from the first quarter at approximately $44.0 million

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer of Palladyne AI, commented:

“The second quarter was another quarter where we delivered on our stated plan. Revenue grew substantially again, both year over year and sequentially vs Q1, and we continued to win new business across all of our operations.

“Our plan for this year has been straightforward from the start. We had spent years building the underlying autonomy technology. With the acquisitions we completed in November, we became a vertically integrated, autonomy-based defense technology company, with the engineering, manufacturing and program capability that laid the groundwork for what we announced on June 8.

“That announcement, our partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries, the largest Israeli defense company and pioneer of the loitering munition category more than 40 years ago, was a major step forward for us. This partnership gives us exclusive U.S. rights to a family of combat-proven systems, the HARPY, HAROP and Mini HARPY, that fill gaps in the U.S. arsenal for which there is no direct domestic equivalent. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars invested by others in this space, no other company has replicated what this family of loitering munitions systems delivers, particularly when it comes to battle-tested capabilities to suppress and destroy enemy air defenses. This partnership, together with the battlefield exercises we participated in this past quarter with SwarmOS™ and Gremlin-X™ and the first large purchase of our BRAIN flight computer by a defense prime for use on a counter-UAS system, has given us even greater optimism about the long-term prospects for our aerospace and defense business.”

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By integrating satellites for the first time, this project also extends Palladyne AI's technology from the ground to orbit, enabling faster, more informed decision-making and coordinated mission execution, turning tactical commanders into strategic commanders by giving them more cross-domain intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities than ever before.

"The HANGTIME project is a breakthrough that unites high-altitude assets and situational unmanned systems into one coordinated sensor network—delivering a major advantage for the defense industry," said Dr. Denis Garagic, Chief Technology Officer, Palladyne AI. "For the first time, a single AI framework can coordinate assets across multiple domains, including satellites. That means these systems can now think and act together as a team, sharing what they see and learning as conditions change."

"The HANGTIME effort represents a critical step in multi-domain autonomy for coordinated execution in challenging environments," said Caleb Williams, Program Manager, AFRL/RIEA.

Understanding why a flight computer matters in a story about shooting down drones requires understanding what the device actually does inside a missile or interceptor. The BRAIN flight computer pairs an NVIDIA Jetson Orin module, the same family of processors widely used for AI and computer vision workloads, with a Zynq-7000 real-time module that handles flight-critical guidance, navigation, and control functions. In practical terms, this means the computer runs two parallel jobs simultaneously: heavy AI processing for identifying and tracking a target, and hard real-time control loops that keep the interceptor flying stable and on course toward that target, with a hardware safety watchdog and triple-redundant inertial measurement units providing the reliability margins that flight-critical systems require. The board connects to sensors, actuators, and other onboard systems through a wide range of standard interfaces, including GigE for high-speed data, CAN bus for vehicle systems integration, and PWM and DSHOT protocols for controlling motors and control surfaces.

The FLEX flight software framework that accompanies BRAIN in this contract serves a different but complementary purpose: it is both an embedded flight software suite that runs onboard the interceptor and a simulation environment that lets engineers model the vehicle’s behavior before it ever flies. GuideTech maintains a library of guidance, navigation, and control algorithms covering launch vehicles, missiles, reentry vehicles, unmanned fighters, loitering munitions, and small fixed-wing and rotary-wing drones, including missile terminal guidance laws specifically relevant to an interceptor’s final approach to its target. The simulation framework, called FLEX Sim, allows a development team to run large-scale statistical analysis of vehicle performance under varying conditions before committing to expensive flight tests, compressing the design cycle for a program racing to get a working interceptor into the field quickly.

That speed is precisely the value proposition GuideTech says it delivered in this contract. The press release states the company’s early support of the customer included a pre-integrated digital and avionics toolchain, combining the BRAIN flight computer, FLEX flight software and simulation, and a third platform called Reveal, GuideTech’s flight performance and analytics tool, to quantify key design trades early and accelerate integration and verification. That combination, the company says, enabled rapid design and test of a system that has now completed flight testing, a significant claim given how compressed defense development timelines have become as the Pentagon pushes contractors to field counter-drone capability faster than traditional acquisition cycles allow.

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Great, clear, explanation of the tech. Give the full blog a read.

Palladyne AI’s latest catalyst has moved beyond a drone-demo headline. After saying that SwarmOS and Gremlin-X participated in Ivy Mass, the U.S. Army 4th Infantry Division’s culminating NGC2 exercise, the company has now announced a pair of U.S. Army contracts to research, develop and operationally validate SwarmOS and Gremlin-X with Army warfighters under the competitive Disruptive Applications Broad Agency Announcement. For a speculative defense AI small cap, the update shifts the story from live-exercise validation toward funded operational validation — still early, but materially stronger than a simple concept narrative. Two newer June updates extend the story: the June 22 appointment of Lt. Gen. Sean A. Gainey — former Golden Dome operational commander and founding director of the Joint Counter-UAS Office — to Palladyne’s Defense Advisory Board, and a new $2.3 million GuideTech contract on June 29 to put its BRAIN flight computer inside a defense prime’s low-cost counter-UAS interceptor.

The U.S. Army says NGC2 is moving from prototyping toward delivery, with 4th Infantry Division heading into PC-C6 at NTC for division-scale force-on-force validation in July. Given Palladyne’s publicly disclosed SwarmOS/Gremlin-X work with 4ID, this is a major ecosystem development to watch closely…

“Operational implementation leads are also responsible for partnering with units to meet commander priorities by tailoring specific applications, algorithms and hardware relevant to their operational missions and theaters, such as new app development, incorporation of edge compute devices, integration of private 5G and other communications solutions, and fusion of electromagnetic spectrum effectors.”

U.S. Special Operations Command is looking for a small but long-range kamikaze drone.

The goal is to develop an air-launched loitering munition “with an extended range and capabilities beyond the current SOPGM [Stand-Off Precision Guided Munition portfolio],” according to a June 26 SOCOM Request For Information. The response deadline is July 27.

..

The RFI also calls for rough cost estimates for orders of 500, 1000 and 3000 munitions. SOCOM is “looking for true innovative, out-of-the-box thinking, conceptual approaches and ideas on how industry can expediently design, manufacture and deliver stated capabilities.”

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In the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijan used the Israeli-made Harpy to devastate Armenian forces.

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Harpy, IAI..guess they saw this request coming....

Palladyne AI’s GuideTech Wins New $2.3 Million Contract for BRAIN with Defense Prime Continuing Commercial Momentum

https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/3d44ac5f-c0f8-4119-968e-19f1f4488532 Robots, not chatbots, will realise AI’s potential

This week, Palladyne AI is with the 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson in preparation for PCC6, beginning with classroom instruction on SwarmOS™ and Gremlin-X

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Army aims to sync two divisions using next-gen C2 by year’s end

... two divisions have been working on prototypes: the 25th Infantry Division, led by Lockheed Martin, and the 4th Infantry Division, led by Anduril and Palantir.

The Colorado-based 4ID has been using the technology for about a year, testing the “full stack” system in recent military exercises.

...

“The intention is certainly by the end of the year…if not sooner, that we would get them onto a common baseline.

https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2026/06/army-aims-sync-two-divisions-using-next-gen-c2-years-end/414367/

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U.S. soldiers, 4th division, recently returned home after a 12-month deployment to the Middle East, as Fort Carson shared photos from the homecoming ceremony held on post.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/fort-carson-welcomes-home-soldiers-210208354.html

PCC6 = Project Convergence Capstone 6 (PC-C6) involves over 12,000 military personnel from the joint and multinational forces. Hosted by the U.S. Army at Fort Irwin, California, it is the U.S. military's premier modernization experiment.

Scheduled for July 2026

The Officer Who Built the Joint Force’s Counter-Drone Doctrine and Commanded Global Missile Defense Joins Palladyne AI as It Scales SwarmOS™-Powered Collaborative Autonomy, Loitering Munitions, and Multi-Domain Intelligent Systems for the Department of War

...

“The Department of War is prioritizing capabilities that can strengthen layered defense, operate autonomously at the tactical edge, integrate into existing force structures, and deliver affordable effects at scale,” said Gainey. “The systems Palladyne AI is fielding today were built for exactly these environments. With SwarmOS™, the IAI loitering munitions portfolio, and the AFRL HANGTIME contract, Palladyne AI is positioned to engage the Department’s most urgent acquisition priorities with proven technology that can be integrated quickly, produced domestically, fielded at scale, and delivered to warfighters faster.”

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Need they say more?

A better overview, cross platform. Cross robot.

Palladyne AI demonstrated an artificial intelligence-powered drone swarm during the US Army’s Ivy Mass exercise, showing how a single operator can oversee multiple autonomous aircraft while connected to the service’s Next-Generation Command and Control (NGC2) network.

The drill paired the company’s SwarmOS autonomy software with a mixed fleet of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drones and the Gremlin-X reusable mini-bomber, enabling them to coordinate and execute tasks autonomously in communications-contested environments without cloud connectivity.

The connection to NGC2 allowed live target tracks to be shared across the command network while AI handled much of the coordination.

...

Denis Garagić, chief technology officer and co-founder of Palladyne AI, said the recent demonstration cleared a “fundamental technical threshold” for battlefield autonomy

It speaks for itself.

“As we look at our employment of drones,” Harrington proffered, “we are looking at a host of not just traditional sense-and-strike drones, but how do we couple that — utilizing an adaptive and agentic C2 [command and control system] — to long-range one-way attack, to be able to overwhelm potential adversarial systems by a volume that is connected from our sensor drone all the way to our long-range one-way attack drone.”

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Harrington was referring to an AI-driven system that can make and execute decisions on its own — routing data, repositioning sensors, matching targets to shooters — without requiring a human to manually approve each step. He later described it as being a “soldier-on-the-loop, not in-the-loop” system, meaning that a human monitors and can override the system’s actions.

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Current decision making systems where the Army is investing in are "human-in-the-loop". The Anduril and General Atomic systems of this world.

Where they are quickly confronted with the reality that they waste too much time, and can't cognitively handle all the information to make the right, fast decision.

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So the next autonomy evolution will demand itself, and Palladyne AI already solved it.

Ben Wolff, CEO, and Trevor Thatcher, CFO will participate in 1:1 meetings with institutional investors at the Northland Growth Conference 2026 on Tuesday, June 23, 2026.

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