Interested parties have a limited time to apply.

The US Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has issued a call to industry for a ‘Containerized Autonomous Drone Delivery System’ designed to enable persistent UAS coverage within a geographic area.

This proposed solution aims to automate the storage, launch, recovery, and refit of UAS, currently a very human intensive operation which limits the ability to deploy and sustain mass.

While no publication date was provided on the DIU site, the solicitation appears to be very recent. Though it does call for a tight deadline for responses from industry – 17 February.

Proposed solutions will be evaluated based on their ability to support the sustainment and delivery of “robotic multi-agent systems” at scale in remote and austere environments and must be demonstrable within 90 days of the award, the DIU said.   

Systems that are deployable from land or maritime platforms and can be rapidly set up are particularly sought after, along with those able to remain in a “dormant state” for a period of time and launch UAS on command.

While not enabled through an automated launch system, Russia has placed drones in dormant states near key Ukrainian strongholds before deploying them as kamikazes.

This solicitation is open to US and international vendors.