Neros recently became the only company to crack both leaderboards in the Pentagon’s second Gauntlet. That distinction captures how narrow the margins have gotten as the Drone Dominance Program continues to push toward its goal of fielding over 200,000 combat drones by 2027. The company topped Close Quarters Battle with 88.1 points and placed third in Deep Strike, a rare double finish in a competition that qualified 48 companies submitting 78 distinct drone types before narrowing to 19 companies flying 23 platforms at Fort Carson.
That leaderboard, released in September after a month of live testing at Fort Carson, Colorado, names ten companies as finalists for prototype contracts under a Department of War (DoW) effort that challenges industry to deliver combat-ready drones at scale…and prove it through performance rather than promises.
How Companies Get Into a Gauntlet
Getting a seat at a Gauntlet starts with a formal Request for Solutions, open to companies from the United States and allied Five Eyes nations. The DoW has a strong preference for U.S.-based manufacturing and NDAA-compliant supply chains that exclude covered foreign components.
Submissions go through the NSTXL standardized application process and must meet the requirements of 10 U.S.C. 4022(d), the same authority the DoW uses to issue the fixed-price production orders that promise to follow. A first-time applicant should expect to spend somewhere between 50 and 100 hours preparing a competitive proposal.
The scale of interest has grown fast. Gauntlet I involved a down-select to roughly 26 companies, each fielding a single drone system. It produced 11 award winners out of 12 available slots. Gauntlet II expanded that dramatically at the qualification stage, with 48 companies submitting 78 distinct drone types across the two mission categories. That pool was then narrowed to 19 companies flying 23 platforms in the live event at Fort Carson. The gap between qualifiers and finalists reflects both rising industry interest and a deliberate program design choice. Because vendors could submit multiple systems across mission categories, the number of qualifying submissions outpaced the number of companies that ultimately competed.
Qualification does not guarantee a contract. Every invited vendor for Gauntlet II had to independently deliver 120 lethality-equipped drones within about five weeks, paired with a lethality provider, before the demonstration event even began. That production sprint functioned as its own filter, testing manufacturing readiness before military operators ever flew a single sortie. Vendors also carry all development and manufacturing risk under the program’s terms. Payment arrives only for accepted units actually delivered, with no cost reimbursement and no progress payments along the way.
What Gauntlet II Actually Tested
Gauntlet II ran from mid-August through early September 2026. Participants flew 1,858 sorties across 23 platforms in the two mission categories. Deep Strike tested find-fix-finish performance at a standoff range near 15 kilometers, and officials noted that every one of the 11 long-range platforms tested reached the full 15-kilometer distance this round, compared with only about a quarter of entrants reaching 10 kilometers in Gauntlet I. Close Quarters Battle sent drones into confined spaces such as buildings and tunnels, where maneuverability counted more than reach. A portion of each mission repeated at night. Additional lanes tested electronic warfare (EW) resilience by flying drones directly against counter-UAS (c-UAS) systems, along with controlled kinetic engagement lanes.
Unlike the first Gauntlet, this round added continuous c-UAS jamming throughout testing, a change that shifted scoring toward systems built for degraded GPS and communications environments. It also gave military operators four days of familiarization time instead of two hours. Scoring combined mission performance, evaluations from the operators who flew each system and an assessment of each company’s production and supply chain capacity.
Reading the Leaderboard Correctly
The Drone Dominance Program has been explicit that its leaderboard is not a ranking of the best drones in the industry. It reflects how specific vendors performed against mission vignettes built by warfighters, under one set of conditions, on a fixed set of days. Fixed-wing platforms and quadcopters serve different purposes. Comparing them directly inside a building versus across a 15-kilometer strike corridor rarely produces an apples-to-apples result. Those differences represent design tradeoffs, not universal superiority. For example, Skycutter and ORQA US LLC each appear among the non-placing entries for one mission while placing in the top five for the other, which shows how differently a single platform can perform depending on the mission it faces.
Military operator evaluations factored directly into scoring alongside raw mission data. A drone that delivered exceptional capability but proved difficult to operate can score worse than a simpler system a warfighter masters quickly. The goal, as the program has described it, is to shorten training timelines so capability reaches the field faster, not to reward the most technically complex system. Perennial Autonomy’s Deep Strike win illustrates what separated top performers from the field. The company advanced through an earlier qualification round in Camp Grayling, Michigan, that started with 49 competitors, then finished 9.2 points ahead of its nearest Gauntlet II rival after flying day and night missions with military operators at the controls.
Placement outside the top five also does not equate to elimination. Companies that competed in Gauntlet II without making either leaderboard, including Ascent Aerosystems, Auterion Government Solutions, Griffon Aerospace, Grim Tech, Mountain Horse plus AG3 Labs, Renegade UxS, Stellarion, Teal Drones, UDD Tech Corp and Wilcox Cherry Defense, remain eligible for future competitions.
The Path to Production Orders
Order quantities will be finalized once contracts are negotiated. The program has signaled it intends to place orders totaling around 60,000 drones across both mission categories from Gauntlet II winners.
Gauntlet I already generated orders for 30,000 units. The broader program aims to place up to 1.1 billion dollars in fixed-price orders across four phases, scaling toward more than 200,000 drones by 2027.
Gauntlet III And What Comes Next
The program’s roadmap does not pause for long. A smaller, bomber-focused Gauntlet 2.5 is set to begin next month, followed by Gauntlet III roughly six months after Gauntlet II and a fourth and final Gauntlet about six months after that. Program officials have said each round will look different, shaped by feedback from warfighters, industry participants, and independent assessors.
For an industry accustomed to opaque acquisition cycles, the public leaderboard itself marks a welcome change by giving vendors a clear performance bar and providing outside observers with a way to track whether the program actually delivers fielded systems rather than announcements. With Gauntlet II sorties logged and scored, attention will now turn to how quickly prototype contracts convert into production…and how the next round reshapes the leaderboard.
See the full Gauntlet leaderboards here: https://drone-dominance.io/leaderboard.html