DIU down-selects Anduril, Zone 5 Technologies for low-cost weapon program

Washington-based online publication Breaking Defense, reports that the US Air Force’s Armaments Directorate and the Pentagon’s California-based Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) have down-selected two companies, Anduril Industries and Zone 5 Technologies, to develop a new modular, low-cost air vehicle under the USAF’s Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) program.

The DIU broke the news during the US Air Force Association (AFA) Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado. However, it didn’t include significant detail on the next steps in the ETV program. The announcement eliminates two of the original four companies shortlisted for the ETV program: Leidos Dynetics and Integrated Solutions for Systems Inc.

The ETV program is designed to create a high-speed guided missile prototype capable of being manufactured cheaply and in large numbers and that can also be a test bed for new subsystems and materials.

“The ETV presents an opportunity to leverage promising ideas from industry to create and refine affordable designs for test capabilities that can be produced on a relevant timeline,” said Andrew Hunter, then-Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, when the original shortlisting was made in June 2024.

Given a seven-month deadline to conduct a flight demonstration, Anduril executed a successful test flight of its just-announced Barracuda-500 in late-September last year in a test representative of future deployment of such a weapon. It included a successful vertical launch from a cell that emulated palletised deployment from a cargo aircraft (shades of the US Rapid Dragon program), 30 minutes of  flight and autonomous terminal guidance to a target.

Zone 5 Technologies was reported in Breaking Defense as saying its Rusty Dagger Open Weapon Platform (OWP) has successfully performed end-to-end mission demonstrations including palletised launch, long-duration missions and high-accuracy terminal engagement.”

The company’s OWP is designed to allow “for the rapid integration of new weapons, provides defined pathways for integration of 3rd party capabilities, and builds the necessary foundation to enable true capability re-use across weapon and uncrewed platforms,” according to the Zone 5 Technologies web site.

Additional ETV government project collaborators and evaluators include Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM).