U.S. Air Force Prepares MQ-9 Reapers to Serve as ALTIUS Drone Motherships
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The Pentagon has awarded Anduril Industries a $50 million SBIR Phase III contract to supply ALTIUS drones and full integration support for the MQ-9 Reaper through 2028. The move signals a shift from experimentation to operational fielding as the Air Force prepares the Reaper fleet for distributed, attritable autonomous missions.
According to information published by the U.S. Department of Defense, on October 21, 2025, Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, has received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase III indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a ceiling of 50 million dollars to provide Agile-Launched, Tactically Integrated Unmanned Systems (ALTIUS) and support services. The award covers procurement and support of the ALTIUS-600 family and related Group 2 UAS variants, including payloads, data links, launch tubes, training, technical documentation, and integration work to fully mate the system with multiple platforms, notably the MQ-9 Reaper, through October 22, 2028. The contract is a sole-source award managed by the Asymmetric Capabilities office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, with $1.785 million in FY25 other procurement funds obligated at award.Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link
The ALTIUS-600M loitering munition offers multi-hour endurance, hundreds of kilometers of range, and a modular 3-kilogram warhead, allowing MQ-9 Reapers to launch precision strikes deep inside contested airspace while keeping the mothership safely outside enemy air defenses (Picture source: Anduril).
Under U.S. acquisition rules, a Phase III SBIR contract means the technology has matured sufficiently to move into production and fielding, and the government can sole-source to the original developer if the work is derived from earlier SBIR efforts. In practice, this turns Anduril’s ALTIUS line into a program of record–like capability for Air Force Special Operations Command.
The ALTIUS-600 is a tube-launched, folding-wing Group 2 drone with best-in-class reach and endurance for its size. Anduril describes the system as a 20-plus-pound air vehicle with more than four hours of endurance and a range of around 440 kilometers, launched from aircraft, ground vehicles, or maritime platforms at a wide envelope of speeds and altitudes. A modular nose bay allows payloads of about 3.2 kilograms, from electro-optical and infrared sensor turrets and small synthetic aperture radars to electronic surveillance, communications relay, or warhead modules.
The ALTIUS-600M loitering-munition variant is the most kinetic expression of the design. Open sources describe it as carrying up to a 3-kilogram explosive payload in various seeker and warhead options, including anti-armor and thermobaric effects, while retaining the parent drone’s multi-hour loiter and hundreds of kilometers of reach. That combination puts it in a different class from quadcopters or short-range loitering munitions: it behaves more like a miniature cruise missile that can search, verify, and then strike, rather than a one-way rocket.
The contract language is important because it builds a full ecosystem around this airframe. The Air Force is buying not just air vehicles but data links, launch tubes, integration support, and “new accessories,” and locking all of it under configuration control. In practice, that means MQ-9 squadrons will have a menu of ALTIUS loadouts: pure ISR rounds with high-end EO/IR, electronic-warfare or decoy drones configured to soak up enemy air-defense fire or jam emitters, and 600M strike rounds to finish the kill chain once targets are confirmed.
The MQ-9 Reaper is the mothership that turns these small drones into a theater-level weapon. General Atomics lists the MQ-9A with more than 27 hours of endurance, a service ceiling up to 50,000 feet, cruise speeds around 240 knots, and a payload capacity of about 3,850 pounds, including roughly 3,000 pounds of external stores across six wing pylons. Traditionally, that payload has been devoted to AGM-114 Hellfire, GBU-12 Paveway II, and GBU-38 JDAMs, backed by the MTS-B multispectral targeting system and Lynx SAR. The new approach keeps those weapons but adds wing-mounted launch pods that can fire multiple ALTIUS rounds without sacrificing all hardpoints to kinetic munitions.
AFSOC and General Atomics have already demonstrated the core of this concept under the Adaptive Airborne Enterprise. In late 2023, an MQ-9A launched an ALTIUS-600 from a wing pod while a single crew, using AFSOC’s new control suite, simultaneously managed three MQ-9s in the formation. The Air and Space Forces report on the new contract is explicit that this buy is meant to operationalize those demonstrations.
Pairing MQ-9 with ALTIUS directly attacks the survivability problem that has emerged as Reapers confront modern air defenses in the Red Sea and elsewhere. Instead of pushing the MQ-9 deep into an integrated air defense system, crews can hold the mothership hundreds of kilometers outside a threat belt, then push a screen of ALTIUS drones forward to detect, classify, and, if configured as 600M rounds, attack radar sites, mobile launchers, or command posts. In the Indo-Pacific, that means probing Chinese maritime and coastal defenses without constantly risking a 20-million-dollar airframe. In Europe, swarms of ALTIUS could support suppression of enemy air defenses and counterbattery missions against Russian long-range artillery and air-defense nodes, working in concert with NATO ISR.
In the Middle East and Africa, where MQ-9s already patrol against ISIS remnants, Iranian-backed militias, and other non-state actors, ALTIUS-equipped Reapers could maintain a persistent orbit while dispatching small, low-signature drones to stare over compounds, escort convoys, or, when authorized, carry out surgical strikes with shorter decision timelines and less collateral risk than a 500-pound bomb.
There is also a joint thread that matters for land forces: the U.S. Army’s Air Launched Effects architecture already uses ALTIUS as one of its preferred drones for launch from Gray Eagle, rotorcraft, and ground tubes, with multiple demonstrations showing swarming behavior and autonomous routing. The Air Force move, therefore, points toward a converging ecosystem in which the same family of launched effects can be pushed into the fight by Army helicopters, Air Force MQ-9s, and potentially Navy or Marine Corps aircraft, all sharing data across future Joint All-Domain Command and Control networks.
The contract lines up with the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, which aims to field large numbers of attritable autonomous systems to offset Chinese mass with swarms of small, smart, inexpensive platforms. ALTIUS from MQ-9 does exactly that in the air domain, turning one exquisite, manpower-intensive platform into the command node for a heterogeneous formation of expendable drones. It is an incremental but real step toward the “small, smart, cheap, and many” model U.S. leaders have emphasized as essential for deterring China and Russia.
The development path that produced this moment has been gradual: Area I spent years working with SOCOM and the services on air-launched effects before Anduril acquired the company and folded ALTIUS into its Lattice autonomy stack. Since then, the system has evolved from a clever niche ISR drone into a modular family that can support reconnaissance, electronic attack, and loitering strike missions from multiple motherships. The new SBIR Phase III IDIQ essentially pays Anduril to keep spiraling those payloads, accessories, and integrations while locking in supply for operational units.
The MQ-9 Reaper is no longer just a single, large unmanned shooter orbiting with a rack of Hellfires. With ALTIUS in its launch pods, each Reaper sortie becomes a small unmanned task force: sensors, decoys, jammers, and loitering munitions that can push deep into contested airspace while the expensive mothership stays at arm’s length. How AFSOC and the broader Air Force choose to scale this model between now and 2028 will say a lot about how serious Washington really is about swarming autonomy in a possible future fight with China or Russia.
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The Pentagon has awarded Anduril Industries a $50 million SBIR Phase III contract to supply ALTIUS drones and full integration support for the MQ-9 Reaper through 2028. The move signals a shift from experimentation to operational fielding as the Air Force prepares the Reaper fleet for distributed, attritable autonomous missions.
According to information published by the U.S. Department of Defense, on October 21, 2025, Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, has received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase III indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a ceiling of 50 million dollars to provide Agile-Launched, Tactically Integrated Unmanned Systems (ALTIUS) and support services. The award covers procurement and support of the ALTIUS-600 family and related Group 2 UAS variants, including payloads, data links, launch tubes, training, technical documentation, and integration work to fully mate the system with multiple platforms, notably the MQ-9 Reaper, through October 22, 2028. The contract is a sole-source award managed by the Asymmetric Capabilities office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, with $1.785 million in FY25 other procurement funds obligated at award.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link
The ALTIUS-600M loitering munition offers multi-hour endurance, hundreds of kilometers of range, and a modular 3-kilogram warhead, allowing MQ-9 Reapers to launch precision strikes deep inside contested airspace while keeping the mothership safely outside enemy air defenses (Picture source: Anduril).
Under U.S. acquisition rules, a Phase III SBIR contract means the technology has matured sufficiently to move into production and fielding, and the government can sole-source to the original developer if the work is derived from earlier SBIR efforts. In practice, this turns Anduril’s ALTIUS line into a program of record–like capability for Air Force Special Operations Command.
The ALTIUS-600 is a tube-launched, folding-wing Group 2 drone with best-in-class reach and endurance for its size. Anduril describes the system as a 20-plus-pound air vehicle with more than four hours of endurance and a range of around 440 kilometers, launched from aircraft, ground vehicles, or maritime platforms at a wide envelope of speeds and altitudes. A modular nose bay allows payloads of about 3.2 kilograms, from electro-optical and infrared sensor turrets and small synthetic aperture radars to electronic surveillance, communications relay, or warhead modules.
The ALTIUS-600M loitering-munition variant is the most kinetic expression of the design. Open sources describe it as carrying up to a 3-kilogram explosive payload in various seeker and warhead options, including anti-armor and thermobaric effects, while retaining the parent drone’s multi-hour loiter and hundreds of kilometers of reach. That combination puts it in a different class from quadcopters or short-range loitering munitions: it behaves more like a miniature cruise missile that can search, verify, and then strike, rather than a one-way rocket.
The contract language is important because it builds a full ecosystem around this airframe. The Air Force is buying not just air vehicles but data links, launch tubes, integration support, and “new accessories,” and locking all of it under configuration control. In practice, that means MQ-9 squadrons will have a menu of ALTIUS loadouts: pure ISR rounds with high-end EO/IR, electronic-warfare or decoy drones configured to soak up enemy air-defense fire or jam emitters, and 600M strike rounds to finish the kill chain once targets are confirmed.
The MQ-9 Reaper is the mothership that turns these small drones into a theater-level weapon. General Atomics lists the MQ-9A with more than 27 hours of endurance, a service ceiling up to 50,000 feet, cruise speeds around 240 knots, and a payload capacity of about 3,850 pounds, including roughly 3,000 pounds of external stores across six wing pylons. Traditionally, that payload has been devoted to AGM-114 Hellfire, GBU-12 Paveway II, and GBU-38 JDAMs, backed by the MTS-B multispectral targeting system and Lynx SAR. The new approach keeps those weapons but adds wing-mounted launch pods that can fire multiple ALTIUS rounds without sacrificing all hardpoints to kinetic munitions.
AFSOC and General Atomics have already demonstrated the core of this concept under the Adaptive Airborne Enterprise. In late 2023, an MQ-9A launched an ALTIUS-600 from a wing pod while a single crew, using AFSOC’s new control suite, simultaneously managed three MQ-9s in the formation. The Air and Space Forces report on the new contract is explicit that this buy is meant to operationalize those demonstrations.
Pairing MQ-9 with ALTIUS directly attacks the survivability problem that has emerged as Reapers confront modern air defenses in the Red Sea and elsewhere. Instead of pushing the MQ-9 deep into an integrated air defense system, crews can hold the mothership hundreds of kilometers outside a threat belt, then push a screen of ALTIUS drones forward to detect, classify, and, if configured as 600M rounds, attack radar sites, mobile launchers, or command posts. In the Indo-Pacific, that means probing Chinese maritime and coastal defenses without constantly risking a 20-million-dollar airframe. In Europe, swarms of ALTIUS could support suppression of enemy air defenses and counterbattery missions against Russian long-range artillery and air-defense nodes, working in concert with NATO ISR.
In the Middle East and Africa, where MQ-9s already patrol against ISIS remnants, Iranian-backed militias, and other non-state actors, ALTIUS-equipped Reapers could maintain a persistent orbit while dispatching small, low-signature drones to stare over compounds, escort convoys, or, when authorized, carry out surgical strikes with shorter decision timelines and less collateral risk than a 500-pound bomb.
There is also a joint thread that matters for land forces: the U.S. Army’s Air Launched Effects architecture already uses ALTIUS as one of its preferred drones for launch from Gray Eagle, rotorcraft, and ground tubes, with multiple demonstrations showing swarming behavior and autonomous routing. The Air Force move, therefore, points toward a converging ecosystem in which the same family of launched effects can be pushed into the fight by Army helicopters, Air Force MQ-9s, and potentially Navy or Marine Corps aircraft, all sharing data across future Joint All-Domain Command and Control networks.
The contract lines up with the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, which aims to field large numbers of attritable autonomous systems to offset Chinese mass with swarms of small, smart, inexpensive platforms. ALTIUS from MQ-9 does exactly that in the air domain, turning one exquisite, manpower-intensive platform into the command node for a heterogeneous formation of expendable drones. It is an incremental but real step toward the “small, smart, cheap, and many” model U.S. leaders have emphasized as essential for deterring China and Russia.
The development path that produced this moment has been gradual: Area I spent years working with SOCOM and the services on air-launched effects before Anduril acquired the company and folded ALTIUS into its Lattice autonomy stack. Since then, the system has evolved from a clever niche ISR drone into a modular family that can support reconnaissance, electronic attack, and loitering strike missions from multiple motherships. The new SBIR Phase III IDIQ essentially pays Anduril to keep spiraling those payloads, accessories, and integrations while locking in supply for operational units.
The MQ-9 Reaper is no longer just a single, large unmanned shooter orbiting with a rack of Hellfires. With ALTIUS in its launch pods, each Reaper sortie becomes a small unmanned task force: sensors, decoys, jammers, and loitering munitions that can push deep into contested airspace while the expensive mothership stays at arm’s length. How AFSOC and the broader Air Force choose to scale this model between now and 2028 will say a lot about how serious Washington really is about swarming autonomy in a possible future fight with China or Russia.
