Innovation for the Security of the Nation
The Official Website of the U.S. National Drone Association™
Ai+EXPO
MILITARY DRONE MATCHES
WASHINGTON - JUNE 2025
THIS WEEK // USNDA Drone Maneuver Competition debuted, first Drone Crucible Competition Delayed and Expanded to include additional DoD teams and DIU partnership on the DroneWERX White List
This week the USNDA announced its Drone Competition in Arms Program (DCAP) at the AI+ Expo for National Competitiveness in Washington D.C.
The USNDA DCAP consists of two types of competition formats:
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The Drone Maneuver Competition open to all service members, designed to build and test fundamentals
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The Drone Crucible Competition, designed for each service’s formal Drone Competition in Arms teams to evaluate emerging drone technologies and TTPs
Here’s what happened:
Drone Maneuver Competition Completed!
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Successful competition of the first interservice Drone Maneuver Competition this week at the AI+ Expo, expanded to include allied partner teams, coast guard, highschool and college student competitors.
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The Marine Corps Team took 1st place for the armed services
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The High School team took overall first place for the Drone Maneuver Competition.
Key Leader Engagement & Announcements
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Several senior DoD leaders directly observed the Drone Maneuver Competition, engaged with the competitors, and received 1:1 briefs on the overall design of the DCAP and Drone Crucible Competition, expressing excitement and support for the effort.
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DVs included Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of the Navy, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Vice Commander of SOCOM, General (ret) Stanley A. McChrystal, and General (ret) Joseph Dunford.
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Major General Clair A. Gill, Commanding General of the Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence, provided opening remarks for the Maneuver competition and announced the pending formal formation of the Army’s Drone Competition Program.
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DIU Director Mr. Doug Beck also was present supporting the competition, in conjunction with his keynote highlighting three key initiatives to accelerate drone integration including an evolution and expansion of the Blue List, Project GI to accelerate more capabilities to warfighters, and expansion of compliance assessment partners.
USNDA’s DroneWERX White List & FPV Simulator Hackathon Complete!
Members of SOCOM, USNDA and Call of Duty co-founder Chance Glasco were present at the AI+ Expo hackathon, (which included tracks from OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic) to oversee and judge several competing teams developing concepts and architecture for the DroneWERX White List “Warfighters Reddit”, a repository of emerging prototypes and NDAA compliant drone capabilities. USNDA FPV Simulator prototype hackathon submissions featured realistic flight characteristics using the Tesseract Nano Drone and AI powered realistic operational environments. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place cash awards were announced, sponsored through a partnership with the State of Florida. Development will continue with the goal of a 1.0 public release in December 2025 at the National Drone Conference.
Drone Crucible Competition Date & Expanded to include additional teams & DIU partnership
The original date set for the first Drone Crucible (June 30th - July 3rd), has been rescheduled for Fall 2025 to expand participation to additional DoD teams, and develop an onramp of DroneWERX White List drone capabilities to the DIU Blue List based on feedback from the services’ competition teams through the Drone Crucible Competition.
Key Points:
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The DroneWERX White List is designed as a collaborative, complimentary initiative with DIU, to help rapidly identify emerging drone capabilities, and provide warfighter informal feedback and field experimentation of systems at Drone Crucible Competitions conducted regularly in partnership with SOCOM.
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The DroneWERX White List is NOT designed to be an exclusive onramp towards DIU Blue List. The White and Blue Lists are complementary efforts.
The design of the White List and Drone Crucible Competitions is to American innovators an opportunity for early and direct hands-on warfighter feedback, even (and especially) systems in early prototype or TRL stages. The DoD’s competitive drone teams will select the systems they want to employ in the competition out of the White List, with additional room for industry to demonstrate their capabilities engaging the same suite of targets. This is different from a compliance check - it is a combat effectiveness and operational viability check to ensure that warfighters are constantly engaged with the latest technologies at the speed of relevance.
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The first Drone Crucible Competition in Fall 2025 will still be limited to selected DoD teams and drone companies for the purpose of fine tuning the process and competition format, which includes engagement of a number of targets and stages; movement to contact, CQB, moving enemy convoy, and long distance strikes.
After the model is formalized, the USNDA will work with SOCOM to schedule quarterly Drone Crucible Competitions open to additional DoD teams in 2026.
About the USNDA:
The United States National Drone Association is not for profit, bipartisan, practitioner led Think Tank dedicated to rapidly and responsively advancing small drone and counter drone technology and capability primarily for National Defense, Security and Public Safety through increasing transparency and cooperation between academic industry, government and allied partners to primary events; U.S. National Drone Conference, The Annual Military Drone Championship “Drone Crucible”.
Press and media inquiries can be sent to press@usnda.org