Pentagon Selects Five Winners for Lethal Drone Payload Challenge as Part of $1.1B Drone Dominance Program

The Pentagon named Bravo Ordnance, Kela Technologies, Kraken Kinetics, Mountain Horse Solutions and Northrop Grumman as winners of the Lethality Prize Challenge within the Drone Dominance program. Defense News reported that the Defense Innovation Unit announced the selections in a LinkedIn post last month.

Military officials reviewed submissions from 17 vendors and examined the payloads, their interfaces with Electronic Safe and Arm Devices, and compatibility with drones under consideration.

The cash prize totaled $10,000, though the designs will be presented to participating companies as preferred munitions for one-way attack drones. Northrop Grumman’s winning entry is called the Common UAS Payload. ” Northrop Grumman said it has invested more than $2 billion in technologies and manufacturing facilities over the past several years.

5 million in venture capital. Founder Devan Plantamura, a Navy and Army veteran, told GQ magazine that prior work at military technology startups showed the industry focused too heavily on drone platforms and not enough on the weapons they carry. ” The company states it can create custom warheads in two weeks or less.

Kela Technologies, an Israeli defense startup founded in July 2024 after the Oct. 7 attack, initially focused on software to integrate commercial technology into military systems. 2 billion.

It partnered with Autonomous Guard, another Israeli firm specializing in border security technology including drones, for the Lethality Prize. Kraken Kinetics, founded in 2023 and based in North Carolina, manufactures warheads for drone combat. The company has promoted its Terminus payload for first-person-view attack drones and has demonstrated the system with Army Rangers, Marines and other military units.

Mountain Horse Solutions, founded in 2014 and based in Colorado, is a subsidiary of Global Ordnance. It initially focused on personal protective equipment before expanding into military drones in 2025. That year the company and partner Rotron Aerospace secured a spot on the Defense Department’s Blue UAS list.

The Defense Department launched the Drone Dominance program in July 2025. In December 2025 it outlined a three-phase plan to acquire roughly 300,000 drones by 2028. The first phase invited 26 companies to demonstrate systems.

The second and current phase is evaluating 79 drones from 49 companies for long-range and close-quarters missions. Pentagon officials said the program aims to reduce the average cost of a military drone from roughly $5,000 to $2,300. The third phase is scheduled to begin around November 2026, with final testing six months later.