Reach Power (Reach) and Gambit today announced that their joint Scalable Wireless Aerial Recharging Matrix (SWARM) project has been selected for a funding award through the Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund (OECIF), sponsored by Air Force Operational Energy and managed by the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Energy Resilience and Optimization (ODASW(ER&O)).
OECIF is the Department of War’s premier joint operational energy investment program, funding breakthrough energy solutions for military applications.
The Problem: Drones That Quit After 30 Minutes
Group 1 drones, the small, low-cost uncrewed systems increasingly central to modern warfare, typically carry enough battery for about 30 minutes of flight. By the time a swarm is airborne and coordinated, usable mission time is often already reduced. Scaling up with larger batteries defeats the purpose: cost, weight and logistics overhead eliminate the advantage of small, attritable systems.
The result is a compounding burden on warfighters. Before each flight, someone installs batteries in each drone. After every flight, each battery must be removed, charged, and swapped. In contested environments, battery resupply becomes a dangerous logistics problem, and a key reason drone hit rates in active combat zones hover around 30%.
The Solution: Power Beaming Meets Autonomous Swarming
SWARM addresses this by integrating two emerging capabilities. Reach’s wireless power-beaming solution allows drones to fly to designated waypoints and recharge mid-mission without landing and without human intervention. Gambit’s AI-enabled orchestration behaviors built on its existing autonomous systems framework enable individual drones to factor battery state, mission profile, and charging availability into real-time decision-making.
Together, the system allows a drone swarm to manage its own energy autonomously by routing aircraft to in-air charging waypoints, sustaining continuous coverage, and freeing warfighters from battery logistics.
“OECIF’s early investment in power beaming is yielding significant strategic dividends as the battlefield shifts toward autonomous operations. By enabling remote sensors and drones to maintain persistent ISR, this technology unlocks their true potential—eliminating the tether of battery swaps and constant recharging to provide an unblinking eye on the target,” said Mr. Christopher DePuma, Operational Energy and Power Projection Portfolio Lead.
“Drone swarms are only as persistent as their batteries,” said Chris Davlantes, Founder and CEO of Reach. “SWARM changes the equation. When a drone can recharge itself in the air without human intervention, the full potential of autonomy and swarming is unleashed from battery limits. OE-I has been an outstanding partner in helping advance this vision, and this OECIF funding award validates that the Department of War is prioritizing ways to fundamentally enable true drone autonomy.”
“Today’s limitation isn’t just endurance, it’s the operational burden that comes with it,” said Josh Giegel, CEO of Gambit. “By enabling systems to manage energy and coordinate behavior autonomously, SWARM allows operators to focus on the mission instead of sustaining the systems.”
Applications
SWARM is designed to support a range of mission CONOPs where continuous autonomous coverage is critical, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), counter-UAS (c-UAS), border security, air defense, and force protection.
