“We’ve assembled a motivated group of researchers and developers that we believe could make significant progress toward Gremlins’ vision of delivering distributed airborne capabilities in a robust, responsive and affordable manner,” said Dan Patt, DARPA program manager. “These teams are exploring different, innovative approaches toward achieving this goal and are rolling up their sleeves for the hard work ahead.”ARLINGTON, Va., 10 May 2016. Dynetics Inc. in Huntsville, Ala.; General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. in San Diego; and the Lockheed Martin Corp. Aeronautics segment in Fort Worth, Texas, have joined the Composite Engineering Inc. Unmanned Systems Division in Sacramento Calif., in a U.S. military research program that seeks to build swarms of drone aircraft.Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., have hired the four companies for the first phase of the Gremlins program, which will rely on relatively inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in volley quantities to saturate enemy defenses.DARPA Gremlins will use military C-130 aircraft to launch drone swarms of networked and cooperating unmanned aircraft for electronic attack and reconnaissance missions from standoff ranges, and then recover surviving drones when their missions are completed.DARPA Gremlins Program Official Announcement:http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2016-03-31
