18APR

Gauntlet II confirmed for August 2026

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13:54UTC

The next competitive drone trial will test 50,000 to 60,000 drones against live electronic warfare. Vendors that fail the red team get eliminated.

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Key takeaway

Gauntlet II will eliminate drone vendors whose systems cannot survive electronic warfare.

The Pentagon confirmed Gauntlet II for August 2026 at an undisclosed location described as "brutally hot."¹ The exercise will target procurement of 50,000 to 60,000 additional drones, with JIATF-401 running a live counter-UAS red team using GPS jamming, communications denial, and electronic warfare.

Phase I delivered 30,000 one-way attack drones from 11 vendors at roughly $5,000 per unit . Phase II raises the stakes: drones that cannot survive contested electromagnetic environments will be eliminated from the programme. The total target remains 300,000 or more drones by 2027 under a $1.1 billion budget . Two additional Gauntlets are planned beyond Phase II. Skycutter's 99.3/100 Gauntlet I score will mean nothing if its design cannot withstand active jamming.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

In August the Pentagon will hold a competition where it attacks participating drones with GPS jamming and communications disruption while trying to shoot them down with counter-drone systems. Drones that survive this electronic warfare gauntlet will be selected for bulk orders of 50,000 to 60,000 units. Drones that fail simply leave the programme. This is a significant escalation from Phase I, which tested basic performance. Phase II tests whether drones can actually operate in war conditions. Skycutter won Phase I with a near-perfect score, but that test did not include active electronic warfare.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Gauntlet II's EW survivability requirement will eliminate a significant proportion of Phase I qualifiers, concentrating procurement among a smaller number of technically advanced vendors.
Short term · High
Opportunity
Vendors that pass Gauntlet II gain preferred supplier status for up to 300,000 drones, representing a multi-year contract pipeline worth hundreds of millions.
Medium term · High
Precedent
The Gauntlet model, using live adversarial testing to down-select vendors, will become the standard for all US military drone procurement and will be adopted by allied nations.
Long term · Medium

Sources:UK Ministry of Defence / gov.uk·UK Ministry of Defence / gov.uk·GlobalSecurity.org / US Department of Defense

Mentions:JIATF-401 →Pentagon →Drone Dominance →

First Reported In

Update #3 · Anduril wins $20 billion counter-drone deal

UK Ministry of Defence / gov.uk· 30 Mar 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Gauntlet II confirmed for August 2026

Introduces survivability in contested electromagnetic environments as a hard filter for mass drone procurement.

Led to

LUCAS Enters Combat With Dozens in Stock

LUCAS's combat debut with 'dozens' against a 300,000-drone target set by Gauntlet accelerated urgency for mass production ahead of Gauntlet II.

Occurred 28 Feb 2026

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Lethality Prize feeds Gauntlet II cycle

Gauntlet II confirmation (ID:1745) with its 50,000-60,000 drone Phase II target created the Lethality Prize Challenge as the payload qualification mechanism.

Occurred 14 Apr 2026

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Pentagon DAWG line jumps to $54.6bn

The Gauntlet II 50,000-60,000 drone target established the procurement scale that DAWG's $54.6B request is now sized to fund.

Occurred 21 Apr 2026

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Mountain Horse wins first Lethality Prize

Gauntlet II's August 2026 timeline and 50,000-drone target created the Lethality Prize programme whose first winner Mountain Horse Solutions is.

Occurred 29 Apr 2026

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Different Perspectives

Australian Department of Defence

The $6.9 million counter-drone award to DZYNE, part of Ondas's $70 million order book, is a funded delivery against a real budget line while most of Farnborough's reveals carry no disclosed contract value.

Baykar

Astore Levante extends the Bayraktar TB3 into a European joint venture the same way the Kizilelma export deal opened Indonesian production, treating proven Turkish airframes as the basis for allied manufacturing rather than new design programmes.

Leonardo

Declaring LBA Systems fully operational converts a Turkish export relationship into Italian production lines for Astore Levante, giving Italy a domestic combat-drone manufacturing base without funding a new airframe from scratch.

Minneapolis City Council (Vice President Jamal Osman)

The council killed a free Skydio trial 6-6 over the company's Israeli and ICE sales, not its drone-as-first-responder technology. It sets a precedent that other councils evaluating DFR vendors will now have to weigh alongside cost and capability.

UK Ministry of Defence

BAE's Brontanax reveal at Farnborough runs alongside the MoD's own Project NYX and Project Corvus competitions, neither of which has named Brontanax a winner. A demonstrator and a £300 million programme name are not yet a production order.

Procurement sceptics

Two identically sized IDIQs to different primes within seven weeks, and a five-nation pact where one partner moves weeks ahead of the rest, could just as easily read as an industrial base still improvising vendor mix as a deliberate hedging doctrine. Neither ceiling appears sized against a validated requirement yet.