Mission Automation of Low Cost Group 5 UAS for Contested Logistics

In Agile Combat Employment (ACE) doctrine, where the DAF may lack air superiority or will be required to operate in contested airspace, Grid Aero offers a mobility solution that minimizes risk to crewed aircraft. Utilizing swarm logistics offers the ability to scale logistics solutions, using larger numbers of smaller aircraft to create flexibility in logistics operations and improving mission reliability by distributing payloads to different aircraft and destinations. Grid Aero is leveraging the confluence of automation and consumer-grade technology to design a new generation of ultra-low-cost, ultra heavy lift, purpose-built, STOL capable uncrewed aircraft. The key advantage lies in the fact that uncrewed aircraft do not need to protect onboard humans, allowing their reliability and cost to be tailored to economically or strategically acceptable levels. This contrasts with traditional crewed aircraft, where human safety (rightly) drives high reliability requirements and costs.