XTEND has cleared another milestone in the Pentagon's $1 billion Drone Dominance Program (DDP). On August 20, 2026, parent JFB Construction Holdings (Nasdaq: JFB) said the company's U.S.-manufactured X-Strike lethality package has been accepted as a DDP lethality solution and paired with XTEND's Gauntlet II platform for the next round of competitive trials.
What X-Strike Is
X-Strike combines a U.S.-manufactured Electronic Safe and Arm Device (ESAD) with a modular warhead in a platform-agnostic package designed to bolt onto multiple small unmanned aerial systems, rather than being locked to a single airframe. The system is progressing through Combat Evaluation, has received Army Fuze Safety Board limited approval and has completed government evaluation and New Equipment Training events.
“Drone Dominance is about getting effective, scalable capabilities into the hands of warfighters at speed,” said Roy Levy, EVP and general manager of XTEND U.S., adding that X-Strike is designed to complement the company's autonomous robotic systems and XOS operating system.
Gauntlet II And The DDP
The DDP is the Pentagon's rapid-acquisition track for one-way attack sUAS, aimed at fielding 60,000 systems from top-performing vendors. XTEND is one of 19 companies advancing to Gauntlet II following the Phase II qualifier, and its platform will now carry X-Strike as its lethality option in the next competitive event at Fort Carson, Colorado. That places XTEND alongside the wider Pentagon push to stand up a resilient U.S. drone supply chain, similar to the effort behind PDW's $820M Pentagon loan for domestic components and the 48 Gauntlet II Phase II selections.
Building The Combined XTEND AI Robotics
The DDP milestone lands two weeks before XTEND is expected to close its business combination with JFB. The SEC declared the S-4 registration statement effective on August 11, 2026, and the companies expect to close by September 8, 2026, subject to customary conditions. The combined entity will be renamed XTEND AI Robotics, Inc. and is expected to trade on the NYSE under the ticker XTND. That follows XTEND's recent NATO ally win, a multi-year contract worth up to $15M with a European ministry of defense.
XTEND says it has more than 12,500 systems deployed across 30 countries and is scaling NDAA-compliant production through regional XFAB manufacturing sites in the U.S., U.K., Singapore, Israel and Latvia. See also Powerus' DDP Phase II qualification.
Reporting based on coverage from JFB Construction Holdings via GlobeNewswire and XTEND press releases.