A field of seven firms has been shortlisted to pursue the Air Force's Massed Modular Aircraft initiative, a procurement effort aimed at fielding a more affordable and architecturally flexible unmanned platform to replace the MQ-9A Reaper. Reporting published Wednesday, drawn from unnamed sources, identified seven firms — Otto Aerospace (formerly Otto Aviation), Anduril, Chaos Industries, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Grid Aero, Shield AI, and Swarm Aero — as having moved forward within the MMA program's selection process. Industry verification places all seven of those firms among the participants pressing forward under the MMA programme.
No official statement from the Air Force had been released, though a service spokesperson described the partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit as one focused on accelerating requirements development and rapid prototyping through commercial innovation and shorter timelines, adding that work with industry was continuing to help shape what the future MMA capability would look like. The programme got underway formally in July with a stated goal of fielding at least 500 drones by 2032. Modularity and open-architecture design carry considerable weight in the specifications, which also set a floor of 2,300 nautical miles for unrefueled combat range.
The path that landed Otto Aerospace on the list is rooted in the company's engineering approach, which centres on laminar flow — a condition where air travels in orderly, parallel sheets along a surface, with turbulent mixing kept to a minimum. Keeping airflow attached smoothly along a wing surface reduces the drag that otherwise diminishes thrust, and that aerodynamic gain affects an aircraft's whole operating profile — less fuel burned per kilometre, a longer reach between refuelling stops, and a lighter burden on operating costs.
Teardrop-shaped fuselages paired with long, slender glider-like wings have defined the aerodynamic philosophy behind every Otto aircraft built to date, a lineage stretching back to the Celera 500L, where that body geometry was first employed to draw out laminar flow across as much of the surface as possible. When the Celera 500L appeared at Southern California Logistics Airport in 2017, neither the aircraft nor the company behind it had been publicly identified. Driven by a lone turbocharged V12 piston engine capable of running on multiple fuel types, the Celera 500L used a pusher-propeller configuration to achieve its high-efficiency performance.
One of Otto's patents covers an exhaust configuration incorporating a heat exchanger designed to generate an incremental increase in thrust output. Flight testing of the Celera 500L by Otto included climbs to 15,000 feet and runs at 250 miles per hour across a broad series of evaluation sorties. According to the firm's projections, a flight altitude of 50,000 feet would allow the vehicle to maintain a forward velocity of roughly 460 miles per hour during normal operations.
Attention at the firm has since turned toward the jet-powered Phantom 3500, an aircraft whose design underwent considerable reworking. Fuel consumption for the aircraft, according to figures Otto has put forward, is projected to run at 115 gallons per hour. Fuel burn rates for jets in that size class — among them the Bombardier Challenger 350, Cessna Citation Latitude, and Embraer Praetor 500 — hover near 300 gallons an hour, a figure the company drew from data held by Jet Support Services, Inc. (JSSI).
Built around a teardrop-shaped fuselage, a glider-style main wing, and a T-tail mounted on a rear-extending boom, a pusher-propeller aircraft was developed by Otto Aerospace for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under a programme targeting highly laminar-flow-efficient airframe performance, with a flight test campaign concluding in May. Laser-based power-beaming technology sits at the heart of a DARPA demonstration planned for that drone, with the system designed to transmit electricity to forward operating locations and, in doing so, remove the endurance ceiling for electrically powered unmanned aircraft.
Otto's aerodynamic work on the DARPA contract yielded a vehicle too compact to satisfy Air Force MMA specifications, though a company statement released in May described the flight-tested unmanned platform as a potential reference point for the design of future energy-relay systems or extended-endurance aircraft with markedly reduced fuel consumption. Separately, General Atomics — the manufacturer behind the MQ-9A — has put forward a publicly announced successor concept under the name Wildfire. No comment on the current state of the MMA program was forthcoming from General Atomics when questions about it were put to the company.
A separate contract positions General Atomics to deliver the more advanced FQ-42 Vengeance unmanned aircraft to the Air Force through the Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme. Drone contractor Anduril, already contracted to deliver FQ-44 Fury unmanned aircraft to the Air Force through the CCA initiative, has drawn attention as a potential participant in the MMA effort as well. Two additional tactical drones entered Anduril's portfolio during 2025 — the Omen, a twin-engine hybrid-electric aircraft that takes off and lands on its tail and is built primarily for surveillance and reconnaissance work, and the Thunder, a tiltrotor platform carrying weapons and conceived to fly alongside piloted rotorcraft as an uncrewed wingman.
No details about the design under consideration have been made available by Shield AI through any public channel. Among the hardware in its lineup sits the V-BAT drone — a platform already fielded by military forces in the United States and Ukraine — alongside the more advanced X-BAT, which remains under development. Autonomy software built on artificial intelligence forms another pillar of Shield AI's portfolio, with defence clients and other customers among those it serves.
Gamera, a drone developed by Swarm Aero, demonstrated performance figures and operational characteristics that match the published MMA specifications. Arranged around a compact central fuselage, the layout pairs a nose-mounted propeller with outrigger sponsons housing substantial fuel cells on both flanks, while twin booms extend rearward to support the tail assembly.
A twin-engine cargo drone called the Lifter Lite is taking shape at Grid Aero through an open development process backed partly by AFWERX, a technology incubator housed within the Air Force. No details have surfaced about whether the company plans to modify the Lifter Lite to satisfy MMA standards or intends to put forward an entirely different design.
No drone designs are visible anywhere on the Chaos Industries website. Radar technology — particularly detection systems built to counter unmanned aerial threats — forms the core of what the company designs and brings to market. No statement was provided by Chaos Industries when the organisation was contacted about the MMA program.
A per-unit price goal of $10 million has been set by the Air Force for the MMA drone program. On at least one prior occasion, the Air Force raised the possibility of splitting MMA contracts across multiple vendors or running additional competitive rounds after an initial award — a procurement structure that echoes how the CCA programme has been handled.
Repeated attempts by the Air Force to bring an MQ-9A successor into operational service have yet to produce a viable outcome. Persistent demand for Reaper aircraft, combined with the attrition of dozens of airframes through engagements with Iran and related operations across the Middle East over recent years, has sharpened the push to identify a replacement platform. Funding gaps and other potential complications tied to the initiative have been flagged by Air Force planners.
