Swarm Aero debuts Gamera drone in bid to succeed Reaper

Swarm Aero's Gamera drone. (Swarm image)

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Startup drone maker Swarm Aero is gunning to replace the MQ-9A Reaper , touting its own dual-hull-style unmanned candidate that company executives say will fulfill the Pentagon’s desired traits for a new high-flying hunter-killer.

Swarm’s Gamera debuted today at the Air and Space Forces Association conference here as a full-scale model. The company says the turboprop aircraft sports a 72-foot wingspan and will boast an unrefueled range of 9,000 nautical miles (10,357 miles), with seven hardpoints to carry key munitions and modularity to satisfy multirole demands.

Unlike the Reaper and most long-range drones in service, Gamera doesn’t have a central fuselage but two parallel, oblong fuselages offset from the center. An executive told Breaking Defense that with the drone, the company made specific tradeoffs to achieve a greater distance.

“What we’ve done cuts against the conventional wisdom, which is that to deliver payload from a long range against critical targets, that you want to wrap that in stealth and wrap that in all sorts of protections,” Oliver Palmer, co-founder and chief revenue officer of Swarm, said in an interview with Breaking Defense ahead of the Gamera’s announcement. “And what we’ve done instead is create a very simple, non-stealthy aircraft that’s optimized for extreme range.”

Swarm is offering up the Gamera for the Pentagon’s Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) program . Run by the Defense Innovation Unit and the Air Force, the MMA effort is aiming to field a cheaper and more attrition-tolerant replacement for the Reaper, following significant losses of the aircraft amid conflict with Iran. Officials say the MQ-9A can cost up to $50 million depending on its configuration.

The MMA team has set some ambitious targets. Air Force officials in a briefing with reporters Sept. 3 expressed a goal of getting the unit cost of the MMA air vehicle down to $10 million a copy, and said they have now been tasked to accelerate the program’s fielding.

Swarm is not the first to jump at the MMA competition — MQ-9A manufacturer General Atomics has already come forward to reveal its own candidate called Wildfire — and is unlikely to be the last.

But Palmer asserted Swarm “can beat” the Air Force’s cost target and asserted the company will be “very competitive” on pricing. Swarm CEO Peter Kalogiannis added in the interview with Palmer that “there’s no silver bullet” when it comes to getting prices down, emphasizing that it takes “a concerted effort to drive cost out of the system at every design point.”

Palmer and Kalogiannis maintained that the Gamera was built to be highly modular — supporting the Pentagon’s goal to more easily swap payloads and iterate the aircraft’s hardware and software — and that the drone can carry a weapons load necessary to meet the MMA program’s goals. According to the effort’s solicitation released in July, that includes a payload capacity of at least 2,800 pounds.

“We meet the payload at range numbers for the 2,800 [lbs requirement],” Kalogiannis said. “But we can certainly trade range for payload capacity” to carry more and fly shorter distances, or reduce payload to save weight for fuel and fly farther, if the mission demands it.

While one Air Force official previously opined that a winning MMA design largely won’t have “cutting edge” technology, Kalogiannis said that a “mix” of old and new will strike the right balance. The company has partnered with Honeywell to power the aircraft with the TPE331 turboprop engine, though Kalogiannis pointed to other areas “ripe” for innovation like avionics development and composite aerostructure manufacturing.

Swarm is not just focused on the hardware side. The company also has its own autonomy suite called Legion, and was one of three vendors picked for a DIU program to prototype a command-and-control solution for controlling drone swarms under the Replicator program.

Swarm is currently building the Gamera, which has been in the works since 2022, and aims to fly it later next year, Palmer said. Additionally, Palmer said that Swarm’s “years of investment and preparation on manufacturing” have positioned the firm to “be able to volume produce these in a very accelerated timeline.”

Eventually, Swarm additionally hopes to expand into the civil market with applications like logistics and firefighting.

“That’s always been part of our strategy, is expanding into the civil market,” Kalogiannis said. “But,” he added, the Pentagon “is clearly our first customer.”

Swarm Aero公司的Gamera无人机。（Swarm公司图片）

马里兰州国家港——初创无人机制造商 Swarm Aero 正致力于取代 MQ-9A“死神”无人机，该公司大力宣传其双体式无人候选机型，公司高管称该机型将满足五角大楼对新型高空猎杀无人机的期望特性。

Swarm公司的Gamera战机今天在空军与航天部队协会会议上以全尺寸模型首次亮相。该公司表示，这款涡轮螺旋桨飞机翼展72英尺（约22米），不加油航程可达9000海里（10357英里），配备7个外挂点，可携带关键弹药，并采用模块化设计，以满足多用途需求。

与“死神”无人机和大多数现役远程无人机不同，“加美拉”无人机没有中央机身，而是由两个平行的、偏离中心的椭圆形机身组成。一位高管告诉《防务新闻》，为了实现更远的航程，该公司在设计这款无人机时做出了一些权衡。

Swarm联合创始人兼首席营收官奥利弗·帕尔默在Gamera发布前接受Breaking Defense采访时表示：“我们所做的与传统观念背道而驰，传统观念认为，要从远距离打击关键目标，就需要将有效载荷包裹在隐身和各种防护装备之中。而我们所做的，却是打造一款非常简单、非隐身的飞机，并针对超远航程进行了优化。”

Swarm公司正向五角大楼的“大规模模块化飞机”（MMA）项目推荐其“卡美拉”（Gamera）无人机。MMA项目由国防创新部门和空军联合推进，旨在为“死神”（Reaper）无人机寻找更经济、更耐损耗的替代品。此前，“死神”无人机在与伊朗的冲突中损失惨重。据官员称，MQ-9A的造价最高可达5000万美元，具体价格取决于配置。

MMA团队设定了一些雄心勃勃的目标。空军官员在9月3日向记者通报情况时表示，他们的目标是将MMA飞行器的单价降至1000万美元，并表示他们现在的任务是加快该项目的部署。

Swarm 并非第一个加入 MMA 竞争的公司——MQ-9A 制造商通用原子公司已经推出了自己的候选产品 Wildfire——而且不太可能是最后一个。

但帕尔默断言，Swarm公司“能够超越”空军的成本目标，并表示该公司在定价方面将“极具竞争力”。Swarm公司首席执行官彼得·卡洛吉安尼斯在接受帕尔默采访时补充说，降低价格“没有灵丹妙药”，并强调这需要“在每个设计环节都齐心协力地降低系统成本”。

帕尔默和卡洛吉安尼斯坚称，Gamera无人机采用高度模块化设计，旨在支持五角大楼更便捷地更换有效载荷并迭代改进飞机硬件和软件的目标，并且该无人机能够携带满足MMA项目目标所需的武器载荷。根据7月份发布的项目招标书，其有效载荷能力至少为2800磅。

卡洛吉安尼斯说：“我们能够满足2800磅有效载荷的航程要求。但我们当然也可以牺牲航程来换取有效载荷能力”，从而携带更多有效载荷并缩短飞行距离；或者减少有效载荷以节省燃料重量并飞得更远，如果任务需要的话。

尽管一位空军官员此前曾表示，中标的MMA设计方案大多不会采用“尖端”技术，但卡洛吉安尼斯表示，新旧技术的“融合”才能达到最佳平衡。该公司已与霍尼韦尔合作，为该飞机配备TPE331涡轮螺旋桨发动机。不过，卡洛吉安尼斯也指出，航空电子设备开发和复合材料航空结构制造等其他领域也“亟待”创新。

Swarm公司并非只专注于硬件方面。该公司还拥有自己的自主控制系统Legion，并且是DIU项目选定的三家供应商之一，该项目旨在为Replicator计划下的无人机集群控制开发指挥控制解决方案原型。

帕尔默表示，Swarm公司目前正在建造Gamera无人机，该项目自2022年就开始研发，目标是明年晚些时候进行试飞。此外，帕尔默还表示，Swarm公司“多年来在制造方面的投资和准备”使其“能够在非常短的时间内实现批量生产”。

最终，Swarm 还希望将业务拓展到民用市场，应用于物流和消防等领域。

卡洛吉安尼斯说：“拓展民用市场一直是我们的战略之一。” 他补充道：“但五角大楼显然是我们的首要客户。”