The drone market is obsessed with range.

Longer endurance, longer links, more autonomy, more miles between operator and aircraft.

But part of the market is going in a different direction—drones staying put and physically connected to the operator.

They are called tethered drones and go by “TeUAS.”

Not to be confused with fiber-optic FPVs, which fly away from the operator under their own battery power while a thin data cable spools behind them.

A tethered drone stays physically connected to a ground station or vehicle; the tether provides power and data.

The downside is obvious: no real range, limited maneuverability, a visible cable, and a requirement for ground power.

But that misses the point.

Think of a tethered drone less like an aircraft and more like a sensor on a pole.

Except the pole is a cable, and the drone’s motors keep it extended 100–400 feet into the air.

The result: sensors reach farther, radios reach farther, and a different perspective than ground-based systems. Offensively, it provides reach. Defensively, that reach translates into added time to respond.

Then there is persistence.

Ground power can turn a 30-minute quadcopter sortie into hours—or potentially days—over the same patch of terrain.

In 2024, the Army selected a tethered drone for the Variable Height Antenna program to support its Integrated Tactical Network (ITN). Hoverfly won the program and has fielded 600+ tethered drones to date.

The Air National Guard has been using tethered drone sensing for base defense, and the Army has been ramping up experimentation for other use cases.

Recently, the Maneuver Battle Lab mounted them on an Infantry Squad Vehicle, and the drones followed the moving vehicle, providing persistent reconnaissance and a communications relay—without landing for battery swaps.

While these are rotor-based drones, the pictures can be misleading.

Some tethered drones can host 30-pound payloads—like the ones TCOM makes. The Army has tested TCOM drones with EW kits for persistent (and high-power) jamming.

The same concept is being adapted to USVs, where tethered drones provide elevated sensing to inform on-water missions.

DPI has partnered with General Dynamics on the Navy’s Containerized Tethered Elevated Mast (C-TEM) effort, and the Navy awarded DPI a Phase II SBIR for its VULTURE containerized tethered drone, which is purpose-built to relay military-grade comms (Link-16, etc.).

The Navy is also using tethered drones as a testbed. Last year, the Navy started TULEPS (Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Experimentation Payload System) to streamline drone payload testing.

The Marine Corps has played with the same idea ashore, using a tethered quadcopter as a persistent 5G comm relay—essentially replacing a deployable cell tower with a drone that can be launched and moved in minutes.

The drone market is chasing range, but not every mission needs a drone to go somewhere.

Sometimes the advantage is simply getting a sensor, antenna, or jammer higher—and keeping it there.

The Pentagon’s Maven Smart System has more than 100,000 users, and Operation Epic Fury drove the adoption.

Maven helped the military strike 13,000 targets in 38 days; the contract ceiling passed $1B last year; and it is due to become a program of record.

TRIVIA

On this day in 1991, President George H. W. Bush announced a stand-down that would end nearly 34 years of continuous readiness. Which Cold War mission did he order to end?

A) 24-hr airborne nuclear-armed bombers
B) 24-hr ground alert for nuclear-armed bombers
C) always-armed ICBMs

Blackbeard flies. The Navy released footage showing F/A-18F Super Hornets flying with 2 Castelion Blackbeard hypersonic strike weapons. A $50M development contract turned into a production contract earlier this month for 444 weapons, which nests into a broader framework for the Pentagon to potentially buy 12,000 weapons over the next 5 years.

Mixed company. A new CNAS report argues that cheap drones alone won’t close the Pentagon’s munitions gap, but neither will high-end systems. The best solution isn’t binary—it’s pairing both of them together.

Design tool contract. AFRL selected Anduril, Booz Allen, DCS, Leidos, and Peerless for VOLARE, a research effort to improve digital aircraft design, including thermal management. The awards carry $85M ceilings and run roughly a decade.

“MOSA is not achieved because the program uses the word ‘open.’ … It’s achieved when the standard interfaces are implemented, tested, reused, and applied across programs.”

— James Ruocco, acting Assistant Secretary of War for Acquisition, on the Pentagon’s renewed push to finally implement modular open systems approach (MOSA).

FYI: MOSA has been required by U.S. law for major defense programs since 2019, but it’s been a box-checking exercise due to a lack of guidance and policy on how to implement it. Fence in, that’s changing.

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ANSWER
B) Since October 1957, Strategic Air Command had kept a portion of its bomber force fueled, armed with nukes, and ready to launch within minutes. Bush’s announcement led to the stand-down the following day, ending a nearly 34-year nuclear vigil.