Sikorsky packs 4 Nomad drones into a single shipping container

Nomad 100 fast pack fits four aircraft, mission-command software, power, communications and sustainment equipment inside one standard shipping container. Sikorsky on Monday introduced a containerized kit that packs four of its Nomad 100 drones and the gear needed to fly them into a single shipping container. The announcement came as the Association of the U.S.

Army’s annual meeting opened in Washington. In its planned configuration, two of the aircraft can be mission ready in under 15 minutes, and the other two available within four to six hours, according to Sikorsky. The system aims to launch without a runway from sites such as naval vessels, tactical vehicle staging areas and improvised landing zones.

After a mission, crews can repack the container, load it onto a compatible vehicle and move it to a new site. Depending on how a customer configures it, the kit could support intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting missions, as well as light attack and contested logistics, the company said. Sikorsky said the U.S.

Military needs to rapidly expand its inventory of autonomous aircraft with compact systems that can be deployed, sustained and moved quickly in contested environments. “By packaging aircraft, mission command, communications, power and sustainment into a single containerized system, we are making it easier to move, employ and reposition VTOL UAS capability with urgency and flexibility,” Rich Benton, Sikorsky’s vice president and general manager, said in the release. The Nomad 100 has an 18-foot wingspan and is a Group 3 drone under the Defense Department’s classification system.

It uses Sikorsky’s rotor blown wing design, which pairs a helicopter’s vertical lift and hover with the speed, range and endurance of a fixed-wing aircraft, and it flies with the company’s MATRIX autonomy software. The company has not released the Nomad 100’s payload, range or endurance.

Sikorsky developed the aircraft with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, under its Early VTOL Aircraft Demonstration program, known as EVADE. In July, Sikorsky said it had finished initial ground and flight testing of the Nomad 100 and would next put the drone through an intensive flight test campaign at a government facility.

The company said DARPA chose MATRIX as the autonomy system for all five aircraft in the EVADE program. Sikorsky introduced the Nomad family in October 2025, after an extended flight test of a smaller prototype, the Nomad 50, with a 10.3-foot wingspan.

Monday’s release did not say whether a fast pack has been built, or whether any military service has ordered or is evaluating one. About Michael Scanlon Michael Scanlon is a defense journalist covering air and space warfare.

Air Force A-10 crew chief, he has supported land and sea programs for the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.

Air Force secretary Frank Kendall.