Kratos, Team Member to Prime Contractor Dynetics on DARPA Gremlins Program, Announces Second Successful Flight of X-61A Gremlin Air Vehicle

Air Vehicle Achieves Major Milestones During Flight, Advancing the Program

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 27, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:KTOS), a leading National Security Solutions provider, announced today that the second flight of the X-61A Gremlins Air Vehicle (GAV), which took place in July, was a major success, satisfying major technical and program milestones while significantly reducing risk. Gremlins is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program intended to accelerate our Armed Forces’ ability to perform aerial launch and recovery of multiple low-cost, highly reconfigurable, reusable Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs). Dynetics, a Leidos Company, is the sole prime contractor leading this third phase of the DARPA program. Kratos is a primary member of the Dynetics team as the key contributor to the X-61A Gremlin Air Vehicle design, the airframe production lead, and a part of the flight test support team.

The Gremlins second flight test, completed in just over two hours, was conducted at Dugway Proving Ground near Salt Lake City, Utah. The ultimate program objective is to demonstrate aerial launch and recovery of multiple low-cost reusable UASs. For this second flight test, the entirety of the Gremlins Demonstration System – including GAVs, the launch and recovery system, airborne operator control station, and Gremlins Command, Control, and Communications system - was successfully demonstrated. A key highlight of this event included both formation flight with the C-130 aircraft and a second parachute recovery.

“We have taken a major step forward towards accomplishing airborne recovery, and we are ever so close to achieving it,” said Tim Keeter, program manager for the Dynetics Gremlins team. “Our second GAV flown to date performed very well, which increases our confidence in the X-61A. And for the first time, we rendezvoused and flew in close formation with the recovery C-130 multiple times using the Gremlins Autonomous Docking System (GADS). Multiple captive tests were also conducted for the first time, with actively-controlled GAVs attached to the stabilized towed docking device. This demonstrated the ability of the recovery system to safely reel in and stow GAVs once they have docked. The data collected from these tests will provide the necessary information to perform final tuning of GADS.”