Austin-based NODA AI has landed a $10 million Department of War contract to build MAESTRO, a vendor-agnostic autonomy layer designed to hold together mixed fleets of American military drones, boats and ground robots even when enemy jamming and cyberattacks sever their communications links. The award, disclosed on July 22, 2026, falls under the Pentagon's Multi-Domain Collaborative Autonomy program and directly plugs NODA into the LUCAS attack-drone effort.
What MAESTRO actually does
MAESTRO — short for Multi-Domain Autonomous Enhanced System for Tactical Reasoning and Orchestration — translates a commander's intent into coordinated action across air, surface, undersea and ground unmanned systems from dozens of different manufacturers. NODA's algorithms are engineered to keep custody of that intent in what the Pentagon calls denied, degraded, intermittent and limited communications environments, so autonomous platforms keep pursuing the mission rather than going dark the moment they lose their link. Dr. An “Mike” Tran, Director of Prototyping in the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, said the contract is about proving out affordable mass that “can think and fight as one team when the network degrades” through live testing rather than PowerPoint.
Wired into LUCAS and the Pentagon's cheap-drone push
The contract explicitly ties MAESTRO into the Pentagon's expanding counter- and one-way-attack drone portfolio, including LUCAS — a roughly $35,000-per-unit strike drone reverse-engineered from Iran's Shahed-136 and built by Arizona-based SpektreWorks. LUCAS is already in operational use with U.S. Central Command's Task Force Scorpion Strike, including a launch from the deck of the USS Santa Barbara in the Arabian Gulf. NODA's integration work extends to other autonomy-portfolio programs including MUSIC, Vigilant Spirit and Arbitrator, and the deal requires the company to publish an interface and standards report so the Department can plug in future vendors without rewriting the command layer.
Betting on software, not another exquisite platform
NODA CEO Philong Duong framed the deal as extending a classic military principle — commanders project intent, subordinates execute — to robotic forces. That thesis lines up with a Pentagon push led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's July 2025 “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance” memo, which directed every Army squad to be equipped with cheap, expendable attack drones by the end of fiscal year 2026. NODA's platform already connects dozens of government and OEM systems across domains, and the MAESTRO award folds that stack into the same Multi-Domain Collaborative Autonomy program that recently proved out autonomous electronic warfare with L3Harris and Shield AI. Validation will come through live multi-domain demonstrations in communications-contested conditions, giving the Department a concrete test of whether software alone can turn a mixed OEM fleet into a coherent force under jamming.
Reporting based on coverage from The Defence Blog and RealClearDefense.