The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has chosen defense contractor Dynetics, along with the rest of its team, to proceed to the third phase of its Germlins drone swarm program. In its own announcement, the company revealed that a video we at The War Zone previously reported on actually showed a special docking system that a C-130 Hercules aircraft will tow behind it so that the unmanned aircraft can latch on for a mid-air recovery, not one of the vehicles themselves.
The Pentagon quietly slipped news of the contract award, with a total value of more than $32 million, into a daily contracting notice on April 17, 2018. The release says the work, which will include flight tests of the complete system, including the Gremlins drones and the aircraft-mounted launch and recovery systems, should be completed by January 2020. Ground and limited flight tests will begin in 2018, according to a press release Dynetics issued on April 18, 2018. DARPA launched the first phase of the project, which involved four different industry teams, in August 2015 and started the second phase in 2017.