Ukrainian SkyFall’s drone wins at Pentagon’s Drone Dominance selection

Shrike Fiber, a fibre-optic drone developed by Ukrainian tech company SkyFall, has won Gauntlet I of the US military’s Drone Dominance Program, Defender Media has learned from sources familiar with the selection process.

According to them, SkyFall participated in the competition in partnership with the British company Skycutter, which is listed as the winner on the Drone Dominance website.

The winning drone scored 99.3 out of 100 points, beating the nearest competitor by more than ten points.

A SkyFall representative refrained from commenting on the company’s participation in the Drone Dominance selection process and its partnership with Skycutter, asking to wait for official announcements. Defender Media also sent a written request to Skycutter, but had not received a response by the time of publication.

The Shrike 10 Fiber FPV kamikaze drone is a modification of the popular Shrike FPV drone equipped with a fibre-optic link. Such drones are resistant to electronic warfare systems. The fibre-optic spool length reaches 20 km, and the warhead weighs up to 1 kg.

In addition to Shrike FPV drones, SkyFall produces the Vampire heavy bomber drones and the P1-SUN interceptor drones.

About the Drone Dominance Program

The Drone Dominance Program was launched on December 17 last year. The goal is to quickly and extensively arm American troops with inexpensive drones. The Department of War is prepared to spend more than a billion dollars on this.

The program consists of four gauntlets. Every 6 months, the Pentagon plans to select suppliers and purchase systems from the test winners. Based on the results of the first stage, they want to order 30,000 drones from the 12 best companies.

These 12 test winners will be ranked and will receive different numbers of orders: for example, the US is ready to buy 2,500 drones from the winner, while 1,400 drones from the 12th-place winner. In stages 2-4, the number of drones and the number of participating companies will change.

Eleven companies were selected as winners of the first phase and will share a $150 million budget.

Other Ukrainian participants in the Drone Dominance trials

A total of 25 companies participated in the first phase of the selection process, several of them Ukrainian or linked to Ukraine. Ukrainian Defense Drones placed sixth in the final ranking with a score of 72.9 points. Earlier, Defender Media reported that no information about the company could be found in open sources.

SkyFall was not the only Ukrainian manufacturer participating in the selection in partnership with a foreign company. Drone Fight Group, founded by Vladyslav Plaksin, competed together with the US firm Anno.ai (both companies share the same investor — Ondas Capital). However, they did not make the list of the 11 winners, nor did General Cherry, another Ukrainian participant in the trials.

The second place in the selection was the US company Neros, which has a presence in Ukraine. Defender Media previously published an interview with Neros founder and CEO Soren Monroe-Anderson.