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Autonomous Warfare Market Snapshot: July 2026

Our parent company, GovExec, recently hosted Autonomous Warfare: The New Rules of Combat Acquisition, a webinar exploring how autonomy is reshaping defense acquisition and operations.

To build on that conversation, we took a look at notable opportunities, agencies, programs, vendors, and awards across the autonomous warfare ecosystem. Here’s what we found.

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Download a concise, shareable overview of the opportunities, programs, vendors, and awards shaping the autonomous warfare market.

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Key opportunities & players

Key awards

General Atomics

Production-Ready UAV Test Assets

W58RGZ24C0021

 

$3.26B ceiling; $367.4M obligated.
Supports the development and delivery of production-ready test assets for unmanned aerial vehicle programs.

General Atomics

DARPA LONGSHOT Autonomous Air-Launched Vehicle

LONGSHOT Phase III

 

$103.4M ceiling; $101.9M obligated.
Advances DARPA's LONGSHOT program, developing an unmanned air-launched vehicle designed to deploy existing air-to-air weapons.

Georgia Tech Applied Research

Swarming Autonomy for Heterogeneous Unmanned Systems

Office of Naval Research

 

$84.7M ceiling.
Expands swarming autonomy capabilities across multiple types of unmanned systems for the Office of Naval Research.

General Atomics

MQ-9 Autonomy and Sensor Modernization

MQ-9 Smart Sensor Payloads

 

Supports MQ-9 sensor and autonomy upgrades, helping bridge today's remotely piloted aircraft capabilities with next-generation autonomous systems.

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