The Pentagon leans into drone swarms with a $100M challenge

The U.S. military wants to make it easy for troops to direct swarms of drones—on land, at sea, or in the air—and is offering vendors up to $100 million to do so.On Tuesday, the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit announced the Orchestrator Prize Challenge, the latest sign that the military is looking beyond simply buying warbots in bulk toward the larger challenge of giving commanders a way to command groups of different drones from different makers.“We want orchestrator t