One soldier, two jets, one thumb: Cummings Aerospace fires 3D-printed Hellhounds from a Buggy

• Cummings Aerospace fired two 3D-printed Hellhound S3 jet drones from a buggy-mounted launcher, a primary for the weapon
• One operator despatched each drones on separate autonomous missions utilizing a single handheld hearth management system
• The brand new launcher holds as much as eight drones, and Cummings plans to fireside it subsequent from unmanned floor and naval autos

A small American protection agency has simply proven what mass-produced, 3D-printed air energy might seem like within the subject, and it matches on the again of a utility car.

Cummings Aerospace has fired two of its 3D-printed Hellhound S3 jet-powered drones from a launcher mounted on a Polaris buggy, with a single operator utilizing one handheld controller to ship each drones off on separate autonomous missions.

The corporate says the take a look at met all its goals and marks a number of firsts for the turbojet weapon.

Transferring drones from a bagpack to a buggy?

The demonstration passed off on August 25, 2026, on the Pendleton UAS Vary in Oregon, the place a agency engineer fired the 2 Hellhounds one after the opposite. Each carried inert payloads and flew completely different preplanned routes at completely different speeds; the outcomes have been introduced on October 12 2026.

Till now, the Hellhound had flown solely in its man-portable kind in additional than a dozen flight assessments. This was the primary time it had been fired from a car, the primary use of a brand new launcher that may maintain as much as eight drones, the primary ripple-fire of the S3, and the primary time a single operator managed multiple Hellhound without delay.

Earlier than launch, the operator programmed every drone’s waypoints, altitudes, and flight path into the hand held hearth management system. As soon as airborne, the drones flew these routes on their very own whereas streaming knowledge again, so the operator might watch each flights dwell and redirect or abort both mission.

The play right here is about doing extra with fewer folks: CEO Sheila Cummings put it, as an alternative of manually flying a single drone to a goal, one soldier utilizing one hearth management system can concurrently put a number of Hellhounds on a number of targets.

The Hellhound S3 is roughly the dimensions of a baseball bat and weighs about 13 kilos. Its turbojet engine lets it fly greater than 60 km (37 miles) at speeds as much as 618 km/h (384 mph), placing it in a distinct class from the propeller-driven quadcopters and loitering munitions which have come to outline the struggle in Ukraine.

Additionally it is a lot simpler to construct, leveraging 3D-printed and business off-the-shelf parts that enable for simple modifications, repairs, and mass manufacturing if wanted. Cummings Aerospace frames the Hellhound as a multi-mission weapon reasonably than a single-trick munition. It could actually work as a loitering munition, a precision-guided munition, a one-way assault drone, or a counter-drone interceptor.

Operators can swap between 4 mission modules, protecting armor-piercing, blast-fragmentation, digital warfare, and decoy roles, in underneath two minutes with out instruments.

The corporate has beforehand mentioned the turbojet’s documented prime pace lets it chase and destroy smaller Group 2 and three drones, giving it a hunter-killer function towards different UAVs.

That counter-drone angle is arguably crucial right here as a result of the risk it’s constructed to reply retains getting smarter and cheaper; A latest report on a NATO-backed drone AI that picked its personal goal and struck it, and the US Military exhibiting off its in-house “Dragoons” drone fitted with 3D-printed bombs are merely the tip of the iceberg. Low-cost, printable airframes have gotten the widespread foreign money of contemporary battle, on each the giving and receiving ends.

A lot of the enchantment of the Hellhound S3 as a viable counter lies in its manufacturing course of. The Hellhound is constructed largely with commercially obtainable 3D printers in-house, which is central to Cummings’ purpose of manufacturing a minimum of 100 S3 airframes a month and her said curiosity in licensing the design to US and worldwide companions for distributed manufacturing.

In an period the place drone tariffs and provide chains have develop into a strategic concern, a weapon you may print near the entrance is as a lot a logistics argument as a battlefield one, and one can assume that the Hellhound S3 is however the first of many that can ultimately make it to the trendy battlefield in several shapes, sizes, and capabilities.

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