Huntsville, Alabama-based Cummings Aerospace is readying its Hellhound for submission to the U.S. Army’s loitering munition competition set to kick off later this year, having recently wrapped up flight tests of its turbo-jet powered, 3D-printed kamikaze drone.
The company took its S3 version of its man-portable loitering munition out to the Pendleton Unmanned Aircraft Systems test range in Oregon this month and was able to verify and validate the system’s performance against the Army’s preliminary Low Altitude Stalking and Striking Ordnance, or LASSO, program requirements, CEO Sheila Cummings told Defense News in a Tuesday interview.
“We were able to successfully demonstrate that we could meet the range requirements for LASSO and then ultimately trying to make sure that we’re exercising the max flight speed and so we achieved that,” Cummings said. “We were also able to successfully integrate an inert warhead and conduct flights with that as well as test other subsystem functionality that are critical to overall system verification and validation.”
Hellhound is unique among loitering munitions because it uses turbojet propulsion which provides increased speed, according to Cummings.
“It also gives you the ability to throttle the engine so it gives you a lot more flexibility in your mission in order to maximize either range or flight time,” Cummings said.
In the tests, the loitering munition, weighing in at less than 25 pounds, flew faster than 350 miles per hour at half throttle while passing distances of 20 kilometers using just 50% of its fuel, according to the company. It performed in wind, snow and very low temperatures.
Hellhound is Cummings Aerospace’s first major end-to-end weapon system it has developed. Cummings is a Native American woman-owned small business founded in 2009 as an aerospace engineering outfit with expertise in design, development, production and sustainment of capabilities like missiles, radars and command-and-control system technologies.
Loitering munitions are proving their might on the battlefield, proliferating in places like Ukraine as troops there continue to fight off the Russian invasion, and the Army is developing a structured way to continue to procure a stream of highly capable loitering munitions in its inventory. In particular, the Army plans to enable its Infantry Brigade Combat Teams with the capability to provide the same lethality in this space as Armored BCTs.
In early January, the Army posted a notice on the federal business opportunities website Sam.gov stating it had released controlled but unclassified information outlining the objectives of the LASSO program.
While the objectives are not public, the notice emphasized the need for industry offerings to be compliant with the service’s modular and open systems architecture.
“The compliance with modular open systems architecture standards is another key element of our design,” Cummings said. “That’s actually been a key enabler for us to rapidly conduct design iterations throughout its development, so we’re [using] very rapid design cycles using the 3D printing technology, we can produce new vehicles very quickly and take them out for test[ing].”
Cummings Aerospace plans to submit its offering to the Army’s competition to procure loitering munitions when the service is expected to release a formal request for proposals in the May or June timeframe.
How quickly the Army plans to move forward with the program and how many vendors it might select for demonstration or evaluation has yet to be announced publicly, but the pool would likely include loitering munitions makers like Aerovironment — the manufacturer of the Switchblade deployed in Ukraine — and Anduril, which recently went under contract with the Marine Corps to supply it with its Bolt loitering munition.
Cummings also has its eye on other programs where Hellhound might fit to include the Army’s short-range Launched Effects program. The company is working on concepts where the launch canister can be integrated onto a ground vehicle or from an air platform, Cummings said.
“We’re poised with an incredible solution,” she said, “and the corporate facilities infrastructure to support the follow-on production program.”
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
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