Air Force Finances Drone Software Development
AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force, awarded a $5 million Small Business Innovation Research contract to Darkhive Inc., a San Antonio-based autonomous uncrewed systems developer, to integrate and test the next generation autonomy software for various uncrewed aerial system platforms.
"An open government-owned framework optimized for rapidly integrating, testing and securely deploying software to edge systems has been at the center of our mission from the beginning. The government and industry team supporting this effort is phenomenal, we're honored to have the opportunity to contribute to solving some very hard problems for DoD and, most importantly, delivering for the end user on the front lines," said John Goodson, CEO of Darkhive.
"In order to achieve dynamic, autonomous systems both within the US Department of Defense and with foreign partners, we have to break away from fragmented, vendor-locked approaches to software development and secure deployment on uncrewed systems," said Steve Turner, CTO of Darkhive.
Darkhive has previously been awarded contracts with the Defense Innovation Unit National Security Innovation Capital contract, multiple Small Business Innovation Research with the Air Force, and a Small Business Technology Transfer award partnered with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.
