The Pentagon recently announced the winners of the Lethality Prize Challenge, a $1.1 billion effort to expand domestic drone production. The winners, including Northrop Grumman and smaller companies like Bravo Ordnance and Kela Technologies, developed cost-effective and easily integrated lethal payloads for small drones.
The selected designs will be presented as preferred munitions for one-way attack drones. Northrop Grumman's winning design, the Common UAS Payload, is ready to integrate and deploy immediately.
The Pentagon's goal is to reduce the average cost of a military drone from $5,000 to $2,300. The third phase of the Drone Dominance program is set to begin in November 2026, with final testing six months later.
