DARPA Containerised Drone Swarm Programme

DARPA's Tactical Technology Office has issued RFI DARPA-SN-26-33 seeking concepts for autonomous drone constellations of up to 500 Group 1-3 aircraft housed in self-sustaining containerised launch-and-recovery hubs capable of operating without continuous human control in a contested electromagnetic environment. The RFI closes 15 May 2026. It arrives as SOUTHCOM establishes its Autonomous Warfare Command and Secretary Hegseth commits to a Pentagon-wide sub-unified command for autonomous warfare. What the Pentagon is now building is not a collection of drone procurement programmes. It is an institutional architecture for persistent autonomous force: distributed, concealed, self-regenerating, and designed to operate at machine speed.