Department of War Advances AI Strategy with 'Swarm Forge' Autonomous Drone Initiative
Operating under the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, Swarm Forge represents an operational shift from legacy procurement models. The project establishes a continuous, hands-on "combat season" environment, where elite military operators, commercial technology innovators, and government experts co-develop software, hardware, and tactical concepts under real-world conditions. This collaborative framework compresses the traditional acquisition timeline into a rapid, 90-day zero-to-deployment pipeline, taking cutting-edge drone capabilities straight from field testing to operational use by trained warfighters.
Swarm Forge departs from traditional, slow-moving government acquisition programs, replacing them with a highly competitive "team-of-teams" environment. The Department sets the operational challenges, and America's most innovative commercial technology companies compete, and integrate, directly alongside Special Operations Forces operators in the field.
The initiative began with over 130 competing companies. Through rigorous, continuous field testing, the Department has narrowed the field to approximately 25 key industry partners. This competitive down-select process ensures that only the most resilient, platform-agnostic, and capable systems continue to receive development support, maximizing the impact of commercial sector innovation for the Joint Force.
The second quarterly field Crucible, executed in June, validated the program's primary objectives. The close-knit integration of air and ground systems - orchestrated by an advanced SI battle manager while human operators remained "on-the-loop" - demonstrated that heterogeneous swarms can act as immediate, scalable force multipliers for service Warfighters.
The momentum accelerated in September with the Department’s execution of the third quarterly Crucible at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The event introduced a significantly more complex and difficult operating environment designed to mirror the realistic, contested conditions Warfighters face in near-peer conflicts. Vendors demonstrated their systems' adaptability under electronic warfare interference, at night, and in complex terrain.
A fourth field Crucible is scheduled to take place at Camp Lejeune, NC, in late-January 2027. The information gathered during quarterly Crucibles directly accelerates the efforts of other pace-setting projects by providing real-world drone behavior data to support the development of SI-enabled simulations.
Project Swarm Forge is led by the Department of War’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office in conjunction with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command’s. Under this leadership, the project is moving on an aggressive wartime footing to close the joint force's inventory and doctrinal gaps regarding massed, low-cost robotic systems. By the end of Crucible 4, the Department expects to select and validate finalized swarm packages ready for transition directly to operational units, just one year after launching the project.
About thePace-Setting Projects
Swarm Forge is the first of seven initial Pace-Setting Projects directed under the Department of War's AI Strategy. Together, these initiatives represent a focused, outcome-oriented effort to overcome bureaucratic barriers, enforce Modular Open System Architectures (MOSA), and deliver tangible, war-winning capabilities to the Joint Force on highly compressed timelines.
For questions, please contact CDAO at osd-cdao-pao@mail.mil.
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