The Pentagon's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) has selected 25 companies to participate in Crucible 2 under its Swarm Forge initiative, the agency disclosed on LinkedIn on June 3. The autonomous-systems demonstration is scheduled for June 22-26 at Camp Blanding, Florida, and was organized in partnership with U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the Defense Innovation Unit and the U.S. Naval Drone Association.
A record 133 submissions, 25 selections
The latest solicitation drew 133 submissions, a record for the program. Selected participants will either run live demonstrations or observe activities and will be placed on contract to continue Swarm Forge work after the event. Officials want to see end-to-end autonomous completion of Find, Fix, Finish missions, with each demonstrated swarm comprising a minimum of four UAS operating simultaneously under multi-vendor heterogeneous command and control.
The 25 companies on the field
The selected vendors are AeroVironment, Anduril Technologies, Ark Robotics, Astral Technology, Auterion Government Solutions, Breaker, Chord Robotics, DAINAMIX, Data Blanket, Hardy Dynamics, Helsing, Lockheed Martin, Mistral, NODA A, Nokturnal AI, OpenDefense, Palantir USG, Post Quantum Labs, Regent Defense, Scientific Systems, Scout AI, Shield AI, Skyeton, SwarmInt and Tycho AI. The roster pulls in established primes, defense-tech scaleups and a deep bench of startup autonomy specialists — exactly the mix Swarm Forge was set up to test in mixed-fleet warfare.
Swarm Forge as the AI Acceleration Strategy in motion
Crucible 2 advances the broader Swarm Forge initiative the Department of War launched earlier this year under its AI Acceleration Strategy to rapidly identify, test and field AI-enabled warfighting capabilities through experimentation with military operators. Crucible events are designed as a rapid pathway from prototype to deployment with trained warfighters, and CDAO has emphasized that human oversight of autonomous behavior remains a baseline requirement at every stage.
The selections drop into an already-busy Pentagon autonomy quarter, including the Drone Dominance Phase II gauntlet at Camp Grayling, the U.S. Army containerized autonomous drone hubs pilot and AeroVironment's $117M P550 reconnaissance drone contract.
Reporting based on coverage from ExecutiveGov, DefenseScoop, Real Clear Defense and CDAO's official LinkedIn announcement.