In 2025, the effective hit rate of small drones operated on Ukraine's front lines was reported at around 30%. The cause is often not aiming accuracy. It's the battery running out. Group 1 small unmanned aerial vehicles—drones small enough for a soldier to hand-launch—are limited to about 30 to 45 minutes of flight per charge. Several minutes are spent just reaching the target area for reconnaissance, and the same amount of time is needed to return. The time actually spent with a camera pointed at the target amounts to less than half of the entire mission.
This constraint distorts the very structure of operations. Personnel must be allocated to swap and charge batteries, and the supply lines used to transport batteries to the front line become targets themselves. In a 2026 call for proposals under the US Army's xTechSearchプログラム, energy-related themes ranked at the top among over 800 submitted topics. "Persistent autonomy requires persistent power." This phrase, repeated often by Reach Power founder Chris Davlantes, succinctly captures the structural problem facing military drone operations today.
The Other Wall That Appears When You Stop
There are broadly two ways to extend flight time. One is to make the battery bigger. But added weight reduces flight efficiency and increases cost—a counterproductive tradeoff for Group 1 drones, which are premised on being small and low-cost.
The other approach is "perching." This is an operational mode in which a drone lands (perches) on a utility pole, the edge of a building, a branch, or similar structure, stops its motors, and keeps only its sensors running. Since the power required for hovering drops to zero, surveillance duration can theoretically be extended significantly. The US Army has already put out an SBIR topic soliciting sustained ISR via perching drones, presenting requirements such as autonomous landing on walls and power lines and resilience to gusts of up to 10 knots.
The problem is that even while perched, sensors and communication equipment continue to consume power. Existing solutions such as solar cells and energy harvesting from power lines have been studied, but weather and installation-site constraints are significant. There are many situations—nighttime, indoors, and dense urban environments with many obstructions—where these approaches simply don't work.
So what if power could be delivered wirelessly from an external source?
A Design Philosophy for Carrying Power via Radio Waves
On August 4, 2026, Reach Power and the NIMBUS Lab at Nebraska-Lincoln大学（UNL） announced that they had won an AFWERX（空軍のイノベーション加速組織） STTR Phase I contract. The theme: "Sustained Operation of Perching Drones via Wireless Power Transfer." The project will verify whether a landed drone can be supplied with power via remotely delivered RF (radio frequency) energy, allowing it to indefinitely serve as a communications and ISR node.
Reach Power's approach carries power the same way Wi-Fi carries data. Using the 5.8 GHz and 24 GHz ISM bands (unlicensed bands designated for industrial, scientific, and medical use), the system employs adaptive antenna arrays and beamforming control to concentrate RF energy onto a target receiver. According to the company's FAQ, the amount of power that can be delivered varies depending on transmitter and receiver size, distance, and surrounding environment, but transmission on the order of hundreds of watts is possible at distances of tens of meters.
In May 2024, a demonstration funded by a DARPAのBAA（広域告示） was conducted at NASA Ames Research Center. Four transmitters were linked together as a mesh network, beaming 256 watts of RF energy at an approximately 2.3 kg (5-pound) quadcopter in flight, and demonstrating 50 watts of charging on the receiving end. The distance was about 6 meters. The team also confirmed fault tolerance—when one transmitter was disconnected, the remaining units continued supplying power.
In 2026, the company announced achieving "perpetual flight" at the US Department of Defense's Joint Interoperability Field Experimentation（JIFX 26-2）. Furthermore, in May of that year, the POWER (Persistent Overwatch Wireless Energy Recharging) system was selected as one of 24 winners in the Energy Resilience category at 米陸軍xTechSearch 9.
| Metric | Conventional Small UAV Operations | Reach POWER System (Demonstration Stage) |
|---|---|---|
| Flight/dwell time per session | 30–45 minutes | Theoretically unlimited under power supply |
| Recharging method | Land, swap battery, charge | RF power delivery in flight or while perched |
| Demonstrated transmission power | None (conventional method) | 256 W transmitted, 50 W received (6 m, 2024) |
| Frequencies used | N/A | 5.8 GHz / 24 GHz ISM bands |
| Effect of obstructions | N/A | Power delivery possible even in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) via environmental reflections (per company claims) |
Division of Roles with Laser Power Transmission
When hearing "wireless power transfer," some may think of lasers. Indeed, DARPA's POWER（Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay） program succeeded in May 2025 in delivering over 800 watts for 30 seconds to a receiver 8.6 km away at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico州. In 2023, the 米海軍研究所（NRL） conducted a demonstration in Maryland州 transmitting 1.6 kW over a distance of 1 km. PowerLight Technologies mounted a kilowatt-class laser power transmission system on the KHA K1000ULE drone and conducted flight tests.
The laser approach uses a narrow beam and can deliver high power over long distances, but it is strongly affected by atmospheric conditions. Fog, rain, snow, and dust attenuate the beam, and a clear line of sight is essential. In experiments conducted under severe weather conditions by NRL in 2026, testing continued nearly to the point of total visibility loss in a blizzard, and the results reportedly made the operational challenges clear.
Reach Power's RF approach cannot match lasers in terms of distance (it operates on the scale of tens of meters). In exchange, ISM-band radio waves can bend around walls and obstacles, reaching targets via environmental reflections even in non-line-of-sight conditions. The company explains that "the transmitter software calculates the optimal path and can deliver power even when obstacles are present." Given the assumption of urban warfare, indoor operations, and severe weather, this characteristic is structurally well-suited to the use case of perching drones. Powering a stationary target is easier for beam control than tracking a moving target, which helps offset the RF method's power output limitations.
Autonomy Expertise Brought by the NIMBUS Lab
Under this STTR contract, UNL's NIMBUS Lab (Nebraska Intelligent MoBile Unmanned Systems) is responsible for the autonomous systems and field robotics domain. Lab director Brittany Duncan researched robot-assisted search and rescue at Texas A&M大学 and, in 2014, deployed small unmanned aircraft at the site of the Oso landslide in Washington州. She has also conducted NSF CAREER Award-winning research on human-drone interaction, making her well-positioned to design systems that account for both autonomous operation and the human operational burden.
In a press release, Duncan stated that the project would "evaluate whether perching drones can continue to function as sustained, reconfigurable mission nodes." Here, "reconfigurable" means the ability to switch roles between communications relay and reconnaissance depending on the situation. The underlying concept is not simply to keep a camera running, but to operate as a network node that can reorganize communication pathways as needed.
AFWERX as a Testing Ground for Procurement
The Open Topic SBIR/STTR program through which this contract was awarded was jointly launched in 2018 by the 空軍研究研究所（AFRL） and AFWERX. Under conventional defense procurement, the process from drafting requirements to signing a contract could take years, making it difficult for startups to participate. The Open Topic approach broadly solicits "technologies that address Air Force challenges" without waiting for the military to specify detailed requirements, shortening the timeline from proposal to contract.
Phase I contracts are typically capped at $250,000 and are intended to demonstrate technical feasibility. If deemed promising at this stage, a project can advance to Phase II (prototype development on a scale of up to $1.5 million). Reach Power has already raised $30 million in a DCVC-led Series B in December 2022, and is pursuing commercialization and military applications in parallel. The company is a graduate of Y Combinator's Summer 2015 batch, with a team of 45 people.
Questions That Remain Before Real-World Deployment
What has been confirmed at the Phase I stage is primarily power delivery capability over short distances and under controlled conditions. Numerous unresolved issues remain for real-world deployment.
First, there is the distance-power tradeoff. The figure of 50 watts at 6 meters from the DARPA demonstration—and how well that can be maintained at the tens-of-meters distances envisioned for perching drone operations—is itself the subject of Phase I verification.
Second, there is the question of behavior under contested conditions. If an adversary jams the RF band, can the power beam be sustained? Conversely, could the power beam itself become an electromagnetic signature that exposes one's own position? This point is not addressed in the press release.
Third, there is the matter of simultaneous power delivery to multiple nodes and network control. In June 2026, Reach Power launched the SWARM project jointly with Gambit, securing funding from the OECIF (Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund). This project envisions a swarm of drones in flight autonomously circulating through power-delivery waypoints—a different scenario from powering perching drones, but one that shares a common foundation in autonomous energy management.
Fourth, there is the matter of safety and regulation for RF power transmission. Even though it uses the ISM band, no operational standards—civilian or military—have yet been established for systems that direct hundreds of watts of directional RF beams.
Tesla's early-1900s dream of wireless power transmission at Wardenclyffe Tower collapsed for lack of funding. More than 120 years later, advances in semiconductors and beamforming are drawing the same idea into a realm where it may be achievable at a different scale. But between "possible" and "practical," there is still distance left to verify. Phase I will be the first ruler used to measure that distance.