Driven by a new direction from the Pentagon, the U.S. military as a whole is working to acquire hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of new drones, especially small ones, over the next few years. In turn, the need has arisen for new container launchers capable of rapidly deploying and, if needed, recovering these unmanned aerial systems. Many times in the past, TWZ Attention is drawn to the value of such launch capabilities, whether used on land or at sea, especially using fully networked swarms.
Earlier this week, the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) issued a broad request for what it calls a containerized autonomous drone delivery system (CADDS). DIU’s core focus is to leverage new and improved commercial off-the-shelf technologies to help meet U.S. military needs.
“The Department of War (DoW) faces a robotics-at-scale challenge: Current methods of deploying and sustaining unmanned aerial systems (UAS) rely on direct human-machine interaction to initiate, restore, and retrofit each system,” the CADDS notice explains. “This 1:1 operator-to-aircraft model limits deployment speed and scale while exposing operators to unnecessary risk.”
A sniper with the Washington National Guard’s 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team prepares to launch a quadcopter-type drone. U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. adeline witherspoon
The next “issue” to be addressed, the report adds, is “the need for DoD to be able to rapidly field large numbers of drones while minimizing the risks and burdens of human operators performing kinetic and non-kinetic drone operations in contested environments”.
To this end, “DOW seeks innovative solutions to enable the storage, rapid deployment and management of multi-agent systems to provide sustained UAS coverage over long periods of time or to provide a concentrated effect within a single geographic area and time,” the DIU said. It needs to be “capable of use on land and offshore platforms in day and night conditions and in adverse weather.”
These must be “designed [that] Can be transported via military or commercial vehicles (land, sea, air)” and “can be quickly positioned and operated with minimal handling or set-up. “They must also be able to provide “automated capabilities for storing, launching, recovering and modifying drones within container platforms; with the intention of keeping the system dormant for a period of time and activating the drone system on command.” “
The DIU did not name any specific drones that the CADDS must be able to accommodate, nor did it say how many drones a single launcher should be able to accommodate. The notice does say that the system will be required to support “a homogeneous and heterogeneous mix of government-led drone systems.”
The launch system must also be able to be set up and broken down in minutes and operate with a small footprint. “Ideally, the system should not require more than two people,” the DIU said.
Another example of the DIU saying it wants to help move away from “1:1 operator and aircraft models” using CADDS. U.S. Army
When it comes to the “autonomous” element of the launch system, the DIU said it needs to support “the loop operator and the loop operator decision-making process.”
The market space for containerized launchers for various payloads and for land and sea use has grown steadily globally in recent years. There has been a further trend towards developing systems for launching loitering munitions and other unmanned aerial systems or adapting existing designs to achieve this purpose.
For example, within the past year or so, Northrop Grumman began touting the ability of its now-called Modular Payload System (MPS) to launch drones, as shown in the computer-generated video below. TWZ Development of the system was first reported back in 2018, when it was proposed as a way to ground-launch a variant of the AGM-88 anti-radiation missile. The MPS is also now being promoted as the launcher of the Advanced Reactive Strike Missile (AReS), a surface-to-surface missile derived from the AGM-88G Advanced Anti-Radiation Extended Range Missile (AARGM-ER) and its Alternative Attack Weapon (SiAW) cousin.
Last year, Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries also proposed another concept, a container launcher that can accommodate 48 drones at the same time. As early as 2024, Germany’s Rheinmetall and Israel’s UVision also launched two very similar designs specifically designed to launch members of the latter company’s Hero series of loiter munitions.
Rendering of the UVision container launch system loaded onto a truck. Excellent view
This is just a small sampling of the designs seen so far. Chinese companies are particularly active in this regard, and the country’s development is often linked to the work of cluster capabilities.
Containerized launchers for unmanned aerial systems, usually mounted on trucks, have been in service in many countries for many years. This includes Iran, which are used to launch Shahd-style kamikaze drones, as shown in the video below.
However, many of these systems focus solely on the launch aspect and lack the recovery and retrofit capabilities outlined by DIU for CADDS. Chinese drone company DJI and others in the commercial sector are increasingly offering container-like “docks,” but they are typically designed to accommodate only one unmanned flying system at a time.
What is particularly interesting here is how many of the stated CADDS requirements actually sound related to being able to boot, restore, and Chinese company DAMODA last year launched drones that can charge thousands of small electric quadcopters at the touch of a button. The launcher, known as the Automated Drone Swarm Container System, is used for drone light shows and is intended for entertainment purposes rather than military use.
Still, as we’ve written before:
It’s worth reiterating that DAMODA’s automated drone swarm container system is, at least for now, clearly designed first and foremost for use in the entertainment industry. While the company’s drone light shows are undoubtedly visually impressive and often go viral on social media, they are pre-scripted and performed in a very localized manner. What the company is offering is not a swarm of drones capable of performing a variety of military missions in a highly autonomous manner at considerable distances from their launch point.
At the same time, the large-scale drone light shows put on by DAMODA (and a growing number of other companies) do highlight on a broad level the threat of an already serious problem posed by groups. New automated drone swarm container systems highlight the additional danger of these same threats hiding in plain sight. Continued advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, especially in dynamic positioning, will only create additional challenges, as TWZ This feature has been explored in detail in the past.
This isn’t theoretical either. As mentioned earlier, June [2025]Ukrainian forces have carried out numerous drone attacks on air bases across Russia with the help of concealed launchers mounted on the back of unassuming civilian tractor-trailers. The entire operation was dubbed “Operation Spiderweb” and took months to plan.
Even in an open combat environment, easily deployable container systems that can serve as hubs for drone operations over wide areas with limited manpower requirements can significantly increase capabilities and capacity. Ships, trucks and aircraft themselves could be autonomous and used to transport them to and from forward locations, even in remote locations. If they can support a “heterogeneous mix” of unmanned aerial systems, then individual containers could be used to support a wide range of mission requirements, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, kinetic energy strike and/or communications signal relay.
In general, an inherent benefit of drone swarms is that each individual component does not have to be configured to perform all required tasks. This creates additional flexibility and the ability to respond to threats, as the loss of any particular drone does not necessarily prevent the swarm from continuing to perform its designated mission. Drones themselves offer tangential design and cost advantages because they can be configured to carry only the systems required for specific mission requirements.
TWZ The many possible benefits of loading drone-filled containers onto U.S. Navy ships have been previously detailed. Many of these arguments are equally important when talking about systems designed for use on land. First, container systems are generally easily adaptable to both land and offshore applications.
Driven by parallel developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning, drone swarms will only become more capable as autonomy and, in particular, automatic target recognition continue to advance, which you can read more about here. The highly autonomous swarms of the future will be able to perform a variety of tasks more efficiently and pose complex challenges for defenders. Large-scale drone attacks with limited autonomy already have the inherent ability to overwhelm enemy defenses. In turn, electronic warfare systems and high-power microwave directed energy weapons have emerged as the most capable options for dealing with swarm attacks, but have their own limitations. Even powerful microwave systems have short ranges and are directional in nature, and electronic warfare systems may not be able to counter autonomous drones at all.
As far as DIU’s current requirements for CADDS are concerned, the stated requirements are broad. It remains to be seen what options might be submitted, let alone considered for actual military use by the United States.
Nonetheless, in the current efforts of the U.S. Armed Forces to field various classes of UAVs, the DIU has identified a real emerging capability gap that a counterinsurgency launch system appears to be well-positioned to fill.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
