Small drone manufacturers gathered at Edwards Air Force Base in California in July for Game of Drones, an event built around designing, assembling and flying an aircraft inside a single day, the base stated.
The event ran from 13 to 16 July and is a collaboration between the Experimental Test Force at Edwards, part of the 412th Test Wing, and US-X, a newly commissioned command within the Defense Contract Management Agency. According to the base, the recurring events bring industry and government together to stress and demonstrate capabilities across several areas, among them command and control interoperability, counter-drone systems, rapid field 3D printing and assembly, autonomous flight, and the generation of massed effects and swarming tactics.
Vendors present included Titan Dynamics, whose staff launched rapidly produced airframes during the week, and Thermopylae Aerospace, whose founder and chief executive Yehor Balytskyi briefed Brigadier General Mark Massaro, commander of the Air Force Test Center, on the flight line. Airmen from March Air Reserve Base took part in hands-on sessions with the systems on display, and imagery released by the base shows aircraft produced on 3D printers being prepared for demonstration.
The evaluations feed placement on the small drone Blue List, the Defense Innovation Unit register of systems assessed as compliant with US procurement rules on foreign components and supply chains. That list has become the practical gateway to sales across the American armed forces, and the base says accelerating placement onto it supports the Secretary of War’s Drone Dominance initiative, under which both the services and industry have been directed to speed up testing, acquisition and production of uncrewed systems.
Printing airframes close to the point of use shortens the supply chain and allows designs to be modified against a changing threat, an approach Ukrainian units have adopted extensively with fixed-wing and first-person-view types. What the Air Force is testing at Edwards is whether that model can be made to work within a formal test and evaluation framework rather than as improvisation.
Edwards, in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, has been the centre of American flight test since the 1940s and hosts the Air Force Test Center alongside the Test Pilot School. The 412th Test Wing runs the flying test programmes there, work that has historically centred on crewed aircraft from the X-1 through to the B-21.
