Kestrel
The company commander’s eye. Kestrel is a folding-wing, five-minute launch ISR bird that does not die when the jammers come up, because it was never looking at GPS in the first place.
Kestrel
RQ-26D
Meridian design bureau
Conceptual · not a program of record
- Unit cost
- $85K
- Combat radius
- 80 nm
- Endurance
- 4.5 h
- Speed
- 75 kt
- Ceiling
- 15,000 ft
- Payload
- 8 kg
- FY26 buy
- 2,400
- Rate / year
- 8,000
Launch / recover
Launch. Hand, rail, or vehicle pneumatic — two-person crew, five minutes
Recover. Deep stall / belly skid / net; parachute optional
C2. ATAK / Nett Warrior class; mesh to company node; denied-link autonomous search
Why it is better
- GPS-denied is the default, not a software patch
- Common controller with Lance and Shade — one schoolhouse
- Priced and produced as a round of ammunition, not a program of record pet
- Fits the Transformation in Contact push: organic to the company, not the brigade
Nav (GNSS optional)
- visual odometry
- magnetic + inertial
- mesh relative
- GNSS-optional
Sense
- dual EO/IR
- laser spot
- acoustic cueing
- edge target-class
Effect
- laser designate
- drop mini-munition optional
- comms relay
Against the public program
Army SUAS / Transformation in Contact / Ghost-X
Public. Army FY26 SUAS request ~$726M; Ghost-X and C-100 among Replicator selects
Gap. Replicator fielded hundreds not thousands by summer 2025; units still mix of vendor one-offs
Meridian. One airframe, three payloads, 8,000/year, GPS-denied as the primary nav mode