Cheaper Reaper? Swarm Aero Unveils Gamera

Published Sep 14, 2026 12:57 PM EDT

After the U.S. lost dozens of its MQ-9 Reaper drones to fighting in Iran, newcomer drone-maker Swarm Aero announced Monday that it had developed a drone in the same medium altitude, long-endurance (MALE) class, capable of executing swarm missions and cheap enough to afford losing, even in large numbers. This comes as the USAF is looking for a cheap replacement for the Reaper, targeting just a fraction of the MQ-9’s cost, at $10M per copy .

Called Gamera, the new drone, built from a clean-sheet design, has a wingspan of about 72 feet, a payload capacity of 2,800 pounds, a “Pacific-spanning” unrefueled range of 9,000 miles and a combat radius of 2,300 miles with “hours” of on-station time once at its patrol area. Kitted-out Reapers, which reportedly cost $30-50 million apiece , have a payload capacity of up to 3,800 pounds.

Meet Gamera, a new category of Group 5 strike and sensing UAS that we unveiled at @AFA_Air_Space 's Air, Space & Cyber Conference today. Mass-producible, significantly lower cost than legacy platforms, and the first UAS specifically designed to employ bomber-class strike… pic.twitter.com/UhT9bgcTPn — Swarm Aero (@SwarmAero) September 14, 2026

Meet Gamera, a new category of Group 5 strike and sensing UAS that we unveiled at @AFA_Air_Space 's Air, Space & Cyber Conference today. Mass-producible, significantly lower cost than legacy platforms, and the first UAS specifically designed to employ bomber-class strike… pic.twitter.com/UhT9bgcTPn

A mockup unveiled at the Air Force Association’s Air Space and Cyber Conference in Washington, D.C. underscores the aircraft’s large wingspan and showcases it’s unique design that is built for cost efficiency, above all else. It features a single propeller, like the Reaper, a central fuselage and hardpoint, large fuel cells in sponsons on either side and an OV-10 Bronco-style twin-boom t-tail.

Gamera at Air, Space, Cyber 2026. (Eric Tegler)

Gamera with a JASSM-ER mockup attached to its centerline hardpoint. The aircraft has seven stores station in total. (Hope Hodge Seck)

These general design choices were made for efficiency and practicality, Peter Kalogiannis, CEO of SwarmAero, said in an interview on the show floor.

“The Bronco tail is really there to provide us that flexibility. So it allows us to use a variety of of payloads, whether they’re released, whether they’re rocket-powered, and it really gives us it… it really sets into the the flexibility goal here, which is we can carry a whole bunch of different payloads, whether they’re strike, whether they’re sensing,” he said. “And it’s also easy to manufacture, right? It’s straightforward, and that’s a design decision that again we’ve made everywhere across the design standpoint.”

Other modularity features include making the wings removable and separate from the fuel system (dry wing), the executives said, which increases efficiency in manufacturing.

Gamera’s native payload, according to the announcement will be JASSM-ER cruise missiles , which have a plussed-up range of 600 miles. This payload, the company said, will deliver “comparable strike effects to exquisite systems for roughly one-tenth the cost-per-effect of existing platforms.”

The MQ-9 is in the process of integrating the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and other missiles as compatible payloads in a move to turn the drones, which conventionally carry laser-guided Paveway bombs and Hellfire missiles, into more robust standoff “missile trucks.”

Swarm Aero execs said the aircraft’s six other hardpoints beyond its centerline one allow it to carry many munitions and other payloads. Renderings of a number of configurations show the drone configured for direct strike with Hellfire/JAGM missiles, ISR support with podded sensing payloads, and even air-to-air missiles.

The Swarm Aero’s comes after the Air Force announced its desire for what it’s calling a “ Massed Modular Aircraft ” – a MQ-9 successor at fraction of the price point: $10 million per copy.

Certain announced Gamera specs line up with the Air Force’s MMA wish list , which included a 2,800-pound payload capacity and an unrefueled combat radius of 2,300 nautical miles.

“Built around a unique manufacturing approach, swarms of these Group 5 UAV give the U.S. Air Force the cost-effective force structure needed for their ultimate goals of surface strike, sensing, and other missions,” the company said in its announcement. “Their tremendous range and payload flexibility fill the gaps between ‘pulsing’ forces to provide highly persistent air dominance over vast areas.”

Oliver Palmer, Chief Revenue Officer and co-founder of Swarm Aero, said the unit cost of Gamera would come in under the $10 million target. While he declined to say by how much, he maintained that the offering for the Air Force’s Massed Modular Aircraft requirement would be “competitive.”

Kalogiannis said the clean-sheet and targeted approach was critical to achieving cost reduction.

“Low cost isn’t something that you kind of sprinkle on an existing design, an existing engineering system, even an existing organization,” he said. “You have to design the aircraft, design the company around that, and that’s what we’ve done. So every design decision we’ve made has been factoring in cost from the very beginning, and manufacturability and the ability to build these at scale.”

While the company has been reticent about the main materials in Gamera, but executives referred to the $10 million Air Force Research Lab contract the company is executing to develop metal composites. The company’s first engineering hire, they said, was a materials and process engineer.

“We’re demonstrating the progress there and kind of applying those technologies to real aerostructure development,” Kalogiannis said.

Expanding the picture is the drone’s swarming capability – the company says it’s most effective in “groups of up to 80,” powered by a SwarmAero command-and-control and autonomy system called Legion. The system purports to let a single military operator or team direct a cluster of dozens of different uncrewed systems across multiple domains at the same time and has already been experimentally deployed by the Navy to direct air and sea drones.

A video screen capture from Swarm Aero showing a large formation of Gameras on a mission. (Swarm Aero)

The company, which was founded in 2022 and is based in northwest Arkansas, also noted that Legion has already been tapped by the Defense Innovation Unit as a C2 source for its Autonomous Collaborative Teaming program .

“At Swarm we’ve inverted conventional wisdom around air power platform design, manufacturing, and combat operations and introduced an affordable, mass-producible strike platform that will re-establish an asymmetric edge over our adversaries,” Palmer said in a statement.

The Air Force has stressed its desire to develop Group 5 unmanned aerial systems akin to Reaper, emphasizing that attritability is not the same as expendability and the category lives between single-use weapons and more exquisite, higher-cost platforms.

The Air Force’s Reaper fleet is reportedly now around 135 units , down from a desired floor of 189, with dozens lost over Iran and Yemen in recent fighting. But the Air Force has only purchased up to 337 of the aircraft over the 19-year life of the program.

An MQ-9 prepares for a sortie. (Air National Guard)

While the Air Force has said it wants at least 180 MMA units, Palmer suggested Gamera’s low price point and capabilities might push the service toward a higher acquisition target.

“Reaper was very specifically for terrorism, overhead surveillance and strike with very short ranges in uncontested airspace, and really not transiting massive distances to do those operations,” he said. “This is really intended more for long-range strike, and then also can do all of those MQ-9 sensing [and other] missions. It’s a different paradigm. So when we think about how you build out the force, how you size that, it’s really for long-range strike, and that really drives the program and the aircraft into a different direction.”

Just today at the Air Force Association’s conference, the USAF confirmed it plans to buy 500 MMAs by 2032. So the stakes are high, to say the least.

The Air Force’s quest for a less-expensive Reaper successor will clearly trigger a race to meet the requirement. Earlier this month, Reaper maker General Atomics unveiled Wildfire , a MALE drone developed from the MQ-9 that purports to deliver similar performance to its progenitor, with some key tradeoffs, at a lower cost. The company has been outspoken about how achieving Reaper’s full capabilities at a fraction of the cost will be an unrealistic challenge. General Atomics has yet to provide full specifics on if it will arrive under the $10 million target cost stipulated by the Air Force.

Contact the editor: Tyler@twz.com

Comments couldn’t be loaded. Please refresh the page.

发布于美国东部时间2026年9月14日下午12:57

在美军于伊朗战事中损失数十架MQ-9“死神”无人机后，新兴无人机制造商Swarm Aero周一宣布，已研发出一款同级别的中空长航时（MALE）无人机，能够执行集群作战任务，且价格低廉，即使大量损失也无妨。与此同时，美国空军正寻求“死神”的廉价替代品，目标是将单价控制在MQ-9的几分之一，即1000万美元左右。

这款名为“加美拉”（Gamera）的新型无人机采用全新设计，翼展约72英尺（约22米），有效载荷2800磅（约1270公斤），不加油航程可达9000英里（约14400公里），足以横跨太平洋，作战半径为2300英里（约3700公里），抵达巡逻区域后可连续执勤数小时。据报道，装备齐全的“死神”（Reaper）无人机每架造价3000万至5000万美元，有效载荷可达3800磅（约1710公斤）。

今天，我们在@AFA_Air_Space 的航空航天与网络会议上发布了全新第五类打击和感知无人机系统——Gamera。它可大规模生产，成本远低于传统平台，并且是首款专为执行轰炸机级打击任务而设计的无人机系统…… pic.twitter.com/UhT9bgcTPn — Swarm Aero (@SwarmAero) September 14, 2026

今天，我们在@AFA_Air_Space 的航空航天与网络会议上发布了全新第五类打击和感知无人机系统——Gamera。它可大规模生产，成本远低于传统平台，并且是首款专为执行轰炸机级打击任务而设计的无人机系统…… pic.twitter.com/UhT9bgcTPn

在华盛顿特区举行的美国空军协会航空航天与网络会议上亮相的模型突显了该飞机巨大的翼展，并展示了其以成本效益为首要目标的独特设计。它采用与“死神”无人机类似的单螺旋桨设计、中央机身和外挂点、两侧翼舱内的大型燃油箱以及OV-10“野马”式双尾撑T型尾翼。

卡美拉亮相2026年航空航天与网络空间国际展览会。（埃里克·泰格勒摄）

“加美拉”战机机身中线挂架上挂载了一枚JASSM-ER导弹模型。该机共有七个挂点。（霍普·霍奇·塞克摄）

SwarmAero 首席执行官 Peter Kalogiannis 在展会现场接受采访时表示，这些总体设计选择是为了提高效率和实用性。

“Bronco尾翼的设计初衷就是为了给我们提供这种灵活性。它使我们能够使用各种有效载荷，无论是释放式的还是火箭动力的，它都真正实现了我们的灵活性目标，即我们可以携带各种不同的有效载荷，无论是打击型的还是传感型的，”他说道。“而且它也很容易制造，对吧？它的结构很简单，这也是我们在整个设计过程中都坚持的设计理念。”

高管们表示，其他模块化特性包括使机翼可拆卸并与燃油系统分离（干翼），这提高了制造效率。

根据公告，Gamera的专用有效载荷将是JASSM-ER巡航导弹，其射程增加至600英里。该公司表示，这种有效载荷将“以现有平台约十分之一的成本，提供与先进系统相当的打击效果”。

MQ-9 无人机正在整合 AGM-158 联合空对地防区外导弹和其他导弹作为兼容的有效载荷，此举旨在将传统上携带激光制导铺路炸弹和地狱火导弹的无人机转变为更强大的防区外“导弹卡车”。

Swarm Aero公司的高管表示，除了机身中心线外的外挂点之外，该无人机还有六个其他挂点，可以携带多种弹药和其他有效载荷。多种配置的渲染图显示，该无人机可以配置为使用“地狱火”/JAGM导弹进行直接打击，也可以配置为使用吊舱式传感有效载荷进行情报、监视和侦察（ISR）支援，甚至还可以携带空对空导弹。

在空军宣布希望研发一种名为“大规模模块化飞机”的MQ-9后继机型（每架价格仅为MQ-9的一小部分，即1000万美元）之后，Swarm Aero公司提出了这一方案。

已公布的卡美拉（Gamera）的某些规格与美国空军的MMA愿望清单相符，其中包括2800磅的有效载荷能力和2300海里的不加油作战半径。

该公司在公告中表示：“这些采用独特制造工艺打造的5级无人机集群，能够为美国空军提供实现其最终目标——对地打击、侦察和其他任务——所需的高性价比兵力结构。它们巨大的航程和载荷灵活性，能够填补‘脉冲式’兵力部署之间的空档，从而在广阔区域内提供高度持久的空中优势。”

Swarm Aero首席营收官兼联合创始人奥利弗·帕尔默表示，Gamera的单价将低于1000万美元的目标。虽然他拒绝透露具体低于多少，但他坚称，针对空军大规模模块化飞机项目提出的方案将具有“竞争力”。

卡洛吉安尼斯表示，从零开始、有针对性的方法对于降低成本至关重要。

“低成本不是简单地添加到现有设计、现有工程系统，甚至是现有组织架构上的，”他说。“你必须围绕这个目标来设计飞机，设计公司，而我们也正是这样做的。因此，我们做出的每一个设计决策从一开始就将成本、可制造性和规模化生产能力考虑在内。”

虽然该公司一直对卡美拉的主要材料讳莫如深，但高管们提到了该公司正在执行的一项价值1000万美元的空军研究实验室合同，该合同旨在开发金属复合材料。他们表示，该公司聘请的第一位工程师是材料和工艺工程师。

“我们正在展示这方面的进展，并将这些技术应用于真正的航空结构开发，”卡洛吉安尼斯说。

无人机集群作战能力进一步拓展了其应用范围——该公司表示，在由名为“Legion”的SwarmAero指挥控制和自主系统驱动的“最多80架无人机集群”中，其作战效能最高。该系统据称可让单个军事操作员或团队同时指挥跨越多个领域的数十架不同的无人系统，并且已由海军进行试验性部署，用于指挥空中和海上无人机。

这是Swarm Aero发布的一段视频截图，展示了一大队Gamera战机正在执行任务。（Swarm Aero）

该公司成立于 2022 年，总部位于阿肯色州西北部，该公司还指出，Legion 已被国防创新部门选为自主协作团队计划的 C2 来源。

帕尔默在一份声明中表示：“在 Swarm，我们颠覆了围绕空中力量平台设计、制造和作战行动的传统观念，推出了一款价格合理、可大规模生产的打击平台，这将重新确立我们对对手的不对称优势。”

空军强调了其开发类似“死神”无人机的第五类无人机系统的愿望，并强调消耗性与消耗性不同，该类别介于一次性武器和更精密、成本更高的平台之间。

据报道，美国空军的“死神”无人机机队目前约有135架，远低于189架的最低目标，其中数十架在近期伊朗和也门的冲突中损失。但该项目19年来，空军总共只采购了337架。

一架MQ-9无人机正在准备执行任务。（美国空军国民警卫队）

虽然空军表示希望至少采购 180 架 MMA 战斗机，但帕尔默认为，Gamera 的低价格和性能可能会促使空军提高采购目标。

“‘死神’无人机最初是专门用于反恐、高空侦察和在非对抗空域进行短程打击的，而且执行这些任务并不需要长途跋涉，”他说道。“而这款无人机则更侧重于远程打击，同时也能执行MQ-9的所有侦察任务和其他任务。这是一种不同的模式。因此，当我们考虑如何组建这支部队，如何确定其规模时，我们真正关注的是远程打击，这也推动了该项目和这款飞机朝着不同的方向发展。”

就在今天，美国空军协会的会议上，美国空军确认计划在2032年前采购500架MMA战斗机。因此，至少可以说，事关重大。

空军寻求更经济的“死神”（Reaper）无人机后继机型，势必会引发一场竞相满足需求的竞赛。本月初，“死神”无人机制造商通用原子公司发布了“野火”（Wildfire）无人机，这是一款基于MQ-9无人机开发的MALE（中空长航时）无人机，声称其性能与“死神”相近，但在某些关键方面有所妥协，且成本更低。该公司一直公开表示，以远低于“死神”的成本实现其全部功能是不现实的。通用原子公司尚未提供具体细节，说明其“野火”无人机能否达到空军规定的1000万美元目标成本。

联系编辑：Tyler@twz.com

评论加载失败，请刷新页面。