Latest news with #CummingsAerospace
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Check out the Hellhound, a 375-mph 3D-printed turbojet-powered exploding drone competing for a spot in the US Army's arsenal
Cummings Aerospace showed off its Hellhound loitering munition at SOF Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida. The system is mostly 3D-printed, can fly at speeds over 375 mph, and is powered by a turbojet engine. CEO Sheila Cummings told BI said the drone's design and features make it unique compared to others on the market. A couple feet long, rounded, relatively lightweight, and easy to make, this exploding drone can fly fast and attaches to a rucksack. That's the basics of Hellhound, a loitering munition made by Cummings Aerospace based in Huntsville, Alabama. This kind of weapon features characteristics of both missiles and drones, delivering surveillance and strike in a single package. The Hellhoud recently completed flight tests and a few demonstrations before being submitted to a top US Army drone competition. Earlier in the year, it was tested in the Army's Expeditionary Warrior Experiment 2025. Loitering munitions are becoming more prolific and playing a role in conflicts like the war in Ukraine. As a turbojet-powered drone, the Hellhound is unlike many other loitering munitions. The top speed is nearly three times faster than the popular Switchblade made by AeroVironment. Hellhound wrapped up flight tests earlier this year, and the S3 version of it, which Business Insider saw up close at SOF Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida, is in submission for the US Army's Low Altitude Stalking and Striking Ordnance, or LASSO, program. LASSO requires select companies to build 135 munitions and 35 prototypes immediately. It's a new-start program, the goal of which is to give infantry brigades better stand-off weapons capabilities. Cummings Aerospace's CEO Sheila Cummings told BI that much of how her company is thinking about the Hellhound has been with modularity, ease of manufacturing, and warfighter feedback in mind. She also said the system is affordable but wouldn't disclose a specific cost or price range. At first glance, the Hellhound loitering munition, sitting inside its case, looks a bit like a boogie board. Weighing less than 25 pounds, the weapon is fairly lightweight and easy to pick up and carry. There are straps on the bottom that can attach it to a soldier's rucksack, something Cummings said was a key suggestion from soldiers who wanted the system to be as man-portable as possible. The majority of a Hellhound is 3D printed. Cummings estimated that, depending on the number of printers, they could fully print a Hellhound in a few days at least and a week at most. Any part that isn't 3D-printed is commercial off-the-shelf, an increasingly important quality for the weapons and systems that the US military acquires as it speeds up the process. The US military has been pushing for more of its systems, especially the uncrewed weapon systems, to be suitable for production on a large scale, interchangeable capabilities and components, and supply chain flexibility. There's a growing realization that for future wars, inexpensive, easily made weapons will be needed in mass in a protracted, large-scale conflict against a major rival like China. A key development of the Ukraine war has been how Ukraine has created an arsenal of cheap drones for surveillance and precision strike. That's something militaries around the world are watching closely given how effective it's been. "We're really trying to minimize the exquisite, custom products," Cummings told BI, explaining that the Hellhound's payload, too, can be interchanged with different sensors or warheads depending on what the mission requirements are simply by twisting and unlocking the nose. A defining characteristic of the Hellhound is its turbojet engine. Cummings said it's a differentiator for the system and company as it not only reduces fuel usage but also increases speed. Cummings Aerospace advertises the Hellhound as being able to fly faster than 375 mph with a range of around 25 miles. The turbojet engine is also a commercially available product, Cummings said. She said the munition's shape, sleek and long, also aids with aerodynamics. Cummings Aerospace has imagined Hellhound swarms in the field providing a mix of intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance and strike. The focus on loitering munitions — which can, as the name suggests, loiter in an area before diving in to strike a target — comes amid efforts to give troops on the ground stand-off strike capabilities. These weapons have seen widespread use in the war in Ukraine, and Russian loitering munitions, like its Lancet drones and Iranian-made Shaheds, have been high-value targets for Kyiv's forces. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
13-05-2025
- Business Insider
Check out the Hellhound, a 375-mph 3D-printed turbojet-powered exploding drone competing for a spot in the US Army's arsenal
A couple feet long, rounded, relatively lightweight, and easy to make, this exploding drone can fly fast and attaches to a rucksack. That's the basics of Hellhound, a loitering munition made by Cummings Aerospace based in Huntsville, Alabama. This kind of weapon features characteristics of both missiles and drones, delivering surveillance and strike in a single package. The Hellhoud recently completed flight tests and a few demonstrations before being submitted to a top US Army drone competition. Earlier in the year, it was tested in the Army's Expeditionary Warrior Experiment 2025. Loitering munitions are becoming more prolific and playing a role in conflicts like the war in Ukraine. As a turbojet-powered drone, the Hellhound is unlike many other loitering munitions. The top speed is nearly three times faster than the popular Switchblade made by AeroVironment. Hellhound wrapped up flight tests earlier this year, and the S3 version of it, which Business Insider saw up close at SOF Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida, is in submission for the US Army's Low Altitude Stalking and Striking Ordnance, or LASSO, program. LASSO requires select companies to build 135 munitions and 35 prototypes immediately. It's a new-start program, the goal of which is to give infantry brigades better stand-off weapons capabilities. Cummings Aerospace's CEO Sheila Cummings told BI that much of how her company is thinking about the Hellhound has been with modularity, ease of manufacturing, and warfighter feedback in mind. She also said the system is affordable but wouldn't disclose a specific cost or price range. At first glance, the Hellhound loitering munition, sitting inside its case, looks a bit like a boogie board. Weighing less than 25 pounds, the weapon is fairly lightweight and easy to pick up and carry. There are straps on the bottom that can attach it to a soldier's rucksack, something Cummings said was a key suggestion from soldiers who wanted the system to be as man-portable as possible. The majority of a Hellhound is 3D printed. Cummings estimated that, depending on the number of printers, they could fully print a Hellhound in a few days at least and a week at most. Any part that isn't 3D-printed is commercial off-the-shelf, an increasingly important quality for the weapons and systems that the US military acquires as it speeds up the process. The US military has been pushing for more of its systems, especially the uncrewed weapon systems, to be suitable for production on a large scale, interchangeable capabilities and components, and supply chain flexibility. There's a growing realization that for future wars, inexpensive, easily made weapons will be needed in mass in a protracted, large-scale conflict against a major rival like China. A key development of the Ukraine war has been how Ukraine has created an arsenal of cheap drones for surveillance and precision strike. That's something militaries around the world are watching closely given how effective it's been. "We're really trying to minimize the exquisite, custom products," Cummings told BI, explaining that the Hellhound's payload, too, can be interchanged with different sensors or warheads depending on what the mission requirements are simply by twisting and unlocking the nose. A defining characteristic of the Hellhound is its turbojet engine. Cummings said it's a differentiator for the system and company as it not only reduces fuel usage but also increases speed. Cummings Aerospace advertises the Hellhound as being able to fly faster than 375 mph with a range of around 25 miles. The turbojet engine is also a commercially available product, Cummings said. She said the munition's shape, sleek and long, also aids with aerodynamics. Cummings Aerospace has imagined Hellhound swarms in the field providing a mix of intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance and strike. The focus on loitering munitions — which can, as the name suggests, loiter in an area before diving in to strike a target — comes amid efforts to give troops on the ground stand-off strike capabilities. These weapons have seen widespread use in the war in Ukraine, and Russian loitering munitions, like its Lancet drones and Iranian-made Shaheds, have been high-value targets for Kyiv's forces.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cummings Aerospace ready to manufacture Hellhound munition
Cummings Aerospace is now ready to manufacture its Hellhound loitering munition at what equates to low-rate production, CEO Sheila Cummings told Defense News in a recent interview at its new production facility near Huntsville, Alabama. The company chose a space next door to Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, home to the program office and testing and development for Army aviation, in 2021 and designed and built a facility intended to produce large numbers of the drones. 'The work we have done to date, not only with the development of the vehicle, but preparing for major acquisition and production of these vehicles, has been a huge focus for us,' Cummings said. 'We're really excited that we are now at manufacturing readiness level 7.' The classification equates to a defined production workflow at the facility and the establishment of work instructions for building the air vehicles. Hellhound, weighing less than 25 pounds, flew faster than 350 miles per hour at full throttle while passing distances of 20 kilometers using just 50% of its fuel, according to the company. The air vehicle is the first major end-to-end weapon system developed by Cummings Aerospace, 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, including missiles, radars and command-and-control system technologies. Hellhound will be demonstrated in several upcoming events with special operations, the U.S. Navy and even abroad in the U.K. this summer, according to Cummings. 'We're using these demo opportunities, in addition to our flight tests, to ultimately execute low-rate production,' Cummings said. 'We're talking about quantities of 12 to 14 vehicles for these demos,' she added, 'but it's really allowing us to fully vet our production process.' The military is changing the way it acquires weapon systems and, in many cases, requires companies to prove they can build systems at scale as part of competitive acquisitions. Historically, a weapon system might be chosen for its performance on the battlefield without much attention paid to the amount of work it would take to build a system or even how stable the supplier base was. Cummings Aerospace wrapped up flight tests of its turbo-jet-powered, 3D-printed kamikaze drone earlier this year and is readying the S3 version of its man-portable Hellhound for submission to the U.S. Army's Low Altitude Stalking and Striking Ordnance, or LASSO, competition set to kick off later this year. The competition would require the company to build 135 munitions total and would expect companies chosen to build 35 prototypes right out of the gate. In Cumming's opinion, the war in Ukraine and tensions in the Indo-Pacific have underscored the need to ensure production capacity and understand the supply chain and its risks. 'That's what's driven the whole modular design and making sure that we have an open systems architecture and be able to swap in technologies very readily,' Cummings said. A large portion of the air vehicle is made using commercially available 3D printers in-house and buying commercially available standard parts that are not unique to just a few suppliers, Cummings said. 'If you think about low-cost solutions — that's part of the strategy — is we have to design something that we can get screws from multiple vendors, we can get 3D print material from multiple vendors,' she said. 'We talk about exquisite payloads, that's a different challenge, but electronics, we have to make sure we can source them from multiple vendors.' And to surge even further, Cummings said there are other solutions that are easy to implement like licensing the design to other suppliers to go and produce using standard 3D printers to help expand production capacity. For the Huntsville facility, Cummings said her goal is to produce at least 100 air vehicles a month. 'Payloads obviously drive some of that,' she noted, but added that there is room to grow beyond that, whether it's next door or using the supplier base to ramp up demand. The expectation now is 'not just a new, novel technology or capability, but prove that you can make it,' Cummings said. 'So we're proving we can make them and make them at scale.'
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cummings Aerospace releases its Hellhound for Army competition
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 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.'
