Skyborne Technologies has been awarded contract from the US Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL). The contract is the first US Department of Defence contract for Skyborne Technologies, who has now received contracts from all members of the AUKUS alliance.

MCWL have awarded the contract to Skyborne for feature development on the Cerberus armed UAS platform. Skyborne’s joint venture company, Athena AI, are also a subcontractor on the project to provide AI target recognition.

Chief Business Officer Adrian Dudok said: “This first US DoD contract is a significant milestone for Skyborne. It will allow us to execute on our ‘Go-to-Market' strategy and enter the US market. The US DoD is an important ally to Australia, and we look forward to getting one of the only man-packable Group 2 tactical offensive sUAS on the market into the operator’s hands.”

The Cerberus is currently the only Group 2 (21 – 55 lbs), man-packable system capable of delivering organic precision offensive support and returning to the operator for reloading at the tactical level.

“We are starting to see examples of small reloadable armed drones making their way into test and evaluation and even theatre in global conflicts. These grenade-dropping drones suffer from accuracy and survivability problems. The MCWL contract execution will improve on the natural accuracy and survivability advantages Cerberus has,” CEO Dr Michael Creagh said.

The Cerberus also has many advantages over Loitering Munitions, particularly around cost per shot, operational flexibility, and the ability to conduct battle damage assessments with the same platform that delivers the effects.

“The proposed development for MCWL will leverage Skyborne's experience in the development of an armed UAS capable of delivering stand-off kinetic effects," Program Manager Dr Eran Medagoda said.