A subsidiary of aerospace defense contractor Kratos Defense & Security Solutions Inc. this week has received two orders totaling $34 million for jet drone aircraft like the ones it manufactures in Sacramento.
San Diego-based Kratos (Nasdaq: KTOS) subsidiary Kratos Unmanned Systems division announced it won the orders this week, though it didn’t identify the customer.
“We believe that this contract award is representative of Kratos’ industry-leading position for certain of the highest-performance and most capable jet drone aircraft flying in the world today,” said Steve Fendley, president of the Kratos Unmanned Systems division, in a news release.
He said Kratos has multiple active production lines producing 150 target and tactical jet drone aircraft per year.
In the past, Fendley has said who Kratos' customers are and where the work would be accomplished. In its most recent releases of the two new orders, Kratos said “due to competitive, security-related and other considerations, no additional information will be provided related to this new contract award.”
The two orders include $20 million for production of high-performance, jet-powered, unmanned aerial target drones. And a separate order for $14 million for Kratos tactical jet drones.
Most of Kratos’ target drones are manufactured in Sacramento at locations in north Sacramento County and at McClellan Park. The company also has more manufacturing in Oklahoma, and it has an engineering office in Roseville.
Kratos is tied for fifth place in the Business Journal’s list of manufacturers in the Sacramento area, with 500 local employees.
Back in December, Kratos got a $50.9 million contract award from the U.S. Navy for 65 of its jet-powered target drone aircraft. Also in December, Kratos received a $4.1 million contract award from an international customer for jet-powered drone targets. At that time, Kratos said it would take the company a year to 18 months to fulfill the orders it got in December.
Kratos designs and builds jet-powered target drones that the U.S. and other military buyers use to train armed forces to shoot down aircraft and inbound missiles. Some of the target drones it builds can fly at just under the speed of sound at altitudes from 7 feet over sea level to 40,000 feet. The U.S. Navy and Air Force use them to train troops to shoot down enemy aircraft and missiles. Sometimes the drones are destroyed by kinetic warheads, and sometimes they are just intercepted in the air. The drones don't land, rather they parachute back to earth for reuse.
Kratos’ Sacramento operations received more than $90 million in orders in 2020. In 2019, Kratos took more than $100 million in a series of drone orders, and it got more than $117 million in a series of orders for tactical drones in 2018.
