By Sean Green | STRIKEWERX Marketing and Communication Director
BOSSIER CITY, La. — STRIKEWERX and Air Force Global Strike Command are one step closer to helping protect mobile assets against small unmanned aerial systems.
STRIKEWERX, the command’s innovation hub, has chosen 26 entities to aid the AFGSC Office of the Chief Scientist’s effort to research and develop state-of-the-art technologies to defend mobile transport systems against swarming, autonomous, small, unmanned aircraft systems.
“U.S. integrated deterrence is backstopped by a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent. This challenge will discover the newest developments in industry to address threats and maintain the command’s commitment to nuclear deterrence,” said AFGSC Chief Scientist Dr. Donna Senft.
The finalists were selected from more than 75 submissions in August and will now provide a virtual showcase of their solutions in November. An in-person showcase will follow in December at the Cyber Innovation Center, Bossier City, Louisiana.
The vendors chosen to potentially provide solutions are:
- Anduril Industries
- Black River Systems Company
- BlueHalo
- Bubo Learning Design
- Decryptor
- DroneShield, LLC
- DRS RADA Technologies
- Epirus Inc
- Flex Force Enterprises Inc
- Fortem Technologies, Inc.
- High Point Aerotech
- Honeywell
- IoT/AI
- KORD
- Leidos
- Leonardo DRS Land Systems
- Louisiana Tech University
- Montana Armament Group LLC
- Persistent Systems, LLC
- Physical Sciences Inc.
- Pierce Aerospace
- Sentien Robotics
- SRC Inc.
- Teleidoscope
- Unmanned Experts Inc.
- VersaTOL
STRIKEWERX Director Russ Mathers said, “These submissions are a great cross section of industry, small business and academia that all work towards our focus areas of detect, defeat, operability and integration. I look forward to working with our partners in Global Strike to further this market research towards potentially creating a prototype.”
Following a May workshop and an eight-week solution submission period, AFGSC evaluators identified the top submissions. Following the virtual and in-person showcases, AFGSC evaluators will identify the best ideas to potentially be contracted for prototype development. If those prototypes prove beneficial, they could be scaled for operational use.