Perennial Autonomy

Perennial Autonomy is a US defence-technology company founded by Eric Schmidt in 2022-2023, originally as White Stork and then Project Eagle, that develops and manufactures AI-guided counter-drone systems including the Merops interceptor, Bumblebee quadcopter and Hornet strike drone.

Perennial Autonomy secured a $500 million three-year IDIQ counter-drone contract from Joint Interagency Task Force 401 on 19 May 2026, the first named IDIQ JIATF-401 has ever awarded. The ceiling covers three platforms: the Merops air-to-air interceptor at roughly $15,000 per unit, the Bumblebee quadcopter, and the Hornet mid-range strike drone. The day after the contract award, the company named Twentyfour Industries of Munich as its European production partner for Merops, establishing a NATO supply line without disturbing the US ceiling.

The company traces its origins to 2022, when former Google and Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt began meetings with Ukrainian officials and launched the initiative as White Stork. It was renamed Project Eagle in February 2024 and rebranded to Perennial Autonomy ahead of its institutional procurement push. Engineers drawn from Apple, SpaceX and Google built the Merops interceptor using live Ukrainian combat data on Russian Shahed interception patterns; the system is credited with destroying more than 4,000 Russian drones in Ukraine and was diverted in a 10,000-unit emergency deployment to the Gulf in March 2026 within five days of the Iran war's start.

At $15,000 per unit, Merops sits 200-to-one cheaper than a PAC-3 MSE interceptor and is specifically sized for the drone threat class conventional interceptors cannot sustain. The JIATF-401 IDIQ does not displace competitors, Anduril's Ghost-X sole-source and AeroVironment's Switchblade LASSO remain active, but it resets the procurement benchmark for every counter-drone contract that follows.

On 6 July 2026, JIATF-401 extended the $500 million ceiling template it set with Perennial's May award to a second vendor: AeroVironment secured its own matched $500 million Domestic Shield IDIQ, plus an $80.5 million Titan award, on the same day. The repeat ceiling confirms Perennial's May contract was a reusable benchmark rather than a one-off: JIATF-401 is running a distributed-award model across multiple counter-drone vendors, spreading commitments rather than consolidating spend with a single supplier.