Kratos Defense & Security (NASDAQ:KTOS), and General Atomics have each won Air Force funding to build an autonomous combat drone. The prototype awards are nice wins for each of the three companies, but they fall short of what investors had hoped would come from the government s Skyborg program.
Kratos will receive $37.8 million to build a prototype, while Boeing gets $25.7 million and privately held General Atomics will get $14.3 million. The three companies have five months to build a test drone able to integrate artificial intelligence and autonomous air vehicle technology to operate in dangerous conditions in place of crewed aircraft. This award is a major step forward for our game-changing Skyborg capability, Air Force Brig. Gen. Dale White said in a statement announcing the awards. We will experiment to prove out this technology and to do that we will aggressively test and fly to get this capability into the hands of our warfighters.