Drones, ships and satellites operate in the same battlespace but rarely as one team. Each platform runs its own software. Each domain has its own command loop. The result is a battlefield where information moves slower than the threat.
Palladyne AI just executed a $4.2 million contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory to solve that problem. The program is called HANGTIME — Hierarchical Adaptive Networked Game-Theoretic Integration of Multiple Echelons.
The acronym is dense. The intent is simple: make a single AI framework coordinate autonomous systems across space, air, maritime and land simultaneously.
Today, a satellite spots a moving target. That data travels down to a ground station. A human operator interprets it and tasks a drone. By the time the drone arrives, the target has moved. HANGTIME aims to collapse that sequence into a single machine-speed decision loop — no handoffs, no translation layers.
Palladyne's SwarmOS platform is the backbone. It runs on an embodied AI architecture called DECA — Decentralized Edge Collaborative Autonomy — that lets each platform perceive, decide and act independently while sharing only the most critical insights with the swarm. No single point of control. No reliance on continuous communication with a command center. If a drone is lost, the swarm reconfigures mid-mission.
Previous SwarmOS deployments covered ground robots and aerial drones. Adding orbit means the same AI now spans the full stack — from a small UAV loitering at 500 feet to a satellite at 550 kilometres. The defence world has talked about multi-domain command and control for years. This is the first time a single commercial AI framework is being contracted to actually build it.
Palladyne has been quiet about its DoD footprint. The company's public contracts paint a clearer picture: a $4.2 million AFRL award, separate U.S. Army contracts to validate SwarmOS on live operational platforms, and a Draganfly integration milestone in March 2026 that tested decentralized swarming on tactical drones. Over the same period, the company raised capital, added a former commanding general of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command to its advisory board, and listed on the Nasdaq.
Anduril's Lattice platform won a $20 billion Army enterprise agreement in March 2026 focused on C2 and counter-drone operations. Shield AI raised $2 billion at a $12.7 billion valuation for its Hivemind autonomous pilot. Palladyne is smaller by market cap but occupies a distinct position: its technology is platform-agnostic by design, meaning it connects existing third-party hardware rather than requiring the customer to buy into a single vendor's ecosystem. For a Pentagon trying to avoid vendor lock-in while scaling autonomy, that is a relevant distinction.
The HANGTIME contract runs through 2027. A successful demonstration would represent one of the first operational deployments of a multi-domain autonomous C2 system — field-ready software connecting satellites, drones and ground vehicles in a single coordinated mesh, not a concept study.
