Griffon Aerospace
Alabama maker of military target drones, including the Outlaw series used in air-defence training.
Griffon Aerospace was one of only three vendors to deliver its full Gauntlet I drone order by 25 August 2026, as the Pentagon ranked the Gauntlet II winners on 18 September.
Last refreshed: 1 October 2026
Timeline for Griffon Aerospace
Mentioned in: DIU ranks Gauntlet II drone winners
Drones: Industry & DefenceBackground
Griffon Aerospace, a privately held company in Madison, Alabama, was founded in 1995 by Larry French and keeps a further office at Fort Bliss, Texas. It began with a manned composite kit aircraft and now builds unmanned aircraft and composite structures.
Its main product line is the MQM-170 Outlaw family of target drones. Armed forces fly Outlaws as stand-in airborne threats to train air-defence crews and to test sensors and interceptors.
That target-drone production base carried Griffon into the Pentagon's Drone Dominance competitions for cheap attack drones, where it became one of the few Gauntlet I vendors to ship every drone it was ordered to supply.
Griffon shipped every Gauntlet I drone
Griffon Aerospace competed in the Pentagon's Drone Dominance fly-offs and completed its Gauntlet I order in full. Delivery figures from Inside Unmanned Systems, relayed by DroneXL, named only three vendors that had done so by 25 August 2026: Griffon, Neros and Ukrainian Defense Drones.
Across the whole field, 13,440 of the 22,320 Gauntlet I drones ordered had arrived by that date. Undelivered volume is being moved from late vendors to the firms that ship, so Griffon's record counts as the 18 September Gauntlet II rankings turn into orders for about 60,000 drones.