- The U.S. Army posted a solicitation on May 6, 2026, for one Draganfly heavy lift drone system with accessories for Fort Drum, New York, with offers due May 16.
- The package includes a 35 kg delivery box, Doodle Labs Mesh Rider Radio, UXV SROC ground control station, 16 batteries, and a Gremsy VIO F1 sensor gimbal.
The U.S. Army is buying a Draganfly commercial, heavy lift drone system for Fort Drum, New York, with the Mission Installation Contracting Command posting a combined synopsis and solicitation on May 6, 2026, for a complete unmanned aerial system package that includes communications hardware, a ground control station, delivery box, batteries, and a sensor gimbal.
The solicitation calls for one Draganfly heavy lift drone configured with a Doodle Labs Mesh Rider Radio and a UXV SROC ground control station, one Draganfly heavy lift delivery box with a 35-kilogram capacity, 16 DraganFuel lithium-ion flight batteries, and one Gremsy VIO F1 sensor and gimbal compatible with the Draganfly platform, according to the posting on SAM.gov. Offers are due May 16, 2026. The solicitation is set aside for total small businesses under FAR 19.5. The contracting office is MICC Fort Drum, located at 4205 PO Valley Road, Fort Drum, New York.
The Draganfly heavy lift drone sits in a category of unmanned aerial systems designed to carry substantial payloads over meaningful distances, filling a role that smaller commercial drones and tactical reconnaissance UAS cannot serve. A 35-kilogram delivery box capacity positions this platform for logistics support, forward resupply, and cargo delivery missions where getting supplies to forward positions without exposing soldiers or vehicles to ground-based threats is the operational priority.
The integration of a Doodle Labs Mesh Rider Radio extends that utility considerably — Mesh Rider is a software-defined radio system designed for low-latency, long-range mesh networking in environments where standard communications links may be unreliable or contested, allowing the drone to maintain connectivity even in challenging electromagnetic environments.
The Gremsy VIO F1 sensor and gimbal adds an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance dimension to what would otherwise be a pure logistics platform. The Gremsy VIO F1 is a stabilized gimbal system designed to carry cameras and sensors while compensating for the vibration and movement inherent in rotary-wing flight, producing smooth, usable imagery even when the drone is moving at speed or operating in wind. A heavy lift drone equipped with both a large-capacity delivery box and a stabilized sensor gimbal is a platform that can serve reconnaissance missions on the way to a delivery point, provide overhead coverage of a landing zone before committing to an approach, or conduct post-delivery damage assessment — the kind of operational flexibility that makes a single platform more valuable than two separate specialized ones.
Fort Drum is home to the 10th Mountain Division, one of the U.S. Army’s primary light infantry formations and a unit with a history of deployment to demanding terrain environments where conventional ground logistics are difficult and air resupply has historically played a critical role.
The 10th Mountain’s operational profile in Afghanistan, where it conducted extensive operations in mountainous terrain with limited road access, built a deep institutional familiarity with the challenges of supplying forward elements across difficult ground. Integrating heavy lift drone capability into that formation connects directly to that operational history and to the Army’s broader push to transition frontline logistics toward unmanned systems that reduce the exposure of soldiers performing resupply missions under threat.