Utah-built Black Widow drones are putting rucksack-portable battlefield eyes into the hands of every Army platoon.
Army Short-Range Reconnaissance UAS
work active confidence: Low status: Draft updated 2026-07-14
Summary
Teal Drones, a Salt Lake City company owned by Red Cat Holdings, manufactures the Black Widow — a rucksack-portable small unmanned aircraft designed for platoon-level reconnaissance. The significance is twofold. Tactically, if every platoon can see beyond the next terrain feature on demand, small-unit situational awareness improves fundamentally.
Impact
The significance is twofold. Tactically, if every platoon can see beyond the next terrain feature on demand, small-unit situational awareness improves fundamentally. Industrially, a sustained Salt Lake City production base for trusted, domestic small drones addresses a gap the U.S. defense establishment has flagged since observing drone use in Ukraine: American industry must be able to build tactically useful, secure, attritable systems at scale.
Tranche 1 fielding reached 16-plus brigades by August 2025, and Army Tranche 2 production began that same month with Teal as a selected vendor. If Black Widow proves reliable under field conditions and the production line meets Army demand, Utah will have contributed a durable piece of the domestic small-drone industrial base.
What It Took
A rucksack-portable small UAS with fiber-optic and RF communications options, day/night sensor payloads, secure data links, and integration into soldier-facing control software. Teal designed Black Widow from the start for battlefield use rather than adapting a commercial drone: Blue UAS compliance, modular repair, jam-resistance, and U.S. supply chains are built in rather than bolted on. The manufacturing and integration work is done in Salt Lake City.
Utah Context
Teal Drones is based in Salt Lake City and states that its defense systems are manufactured there. The SRR selection places Utah at the center of a nationally important program to rebuild domestic small-drone production. Teal sits within a broader Utah drone cluster that includes Palladyne AI (autonomous coordination software) and Vector (fiber-optic FPV manufacturing).
Evidence
- U.S. Army: Army Begins Production of Second Tranche of Short-Range Reconnaissance UAS · https://www.army.mil/article/288117/army_begins_production_of_second_tranche_of_short_range_reconnaissance_uas — source record
- Red Cat: Production Selection for U.S. Army SRR · https://ir.redcatholdings.com/news-releases/news-release-details/red-cat-announces-production-selection-for-u-s-army-short-range-reconnaissance-program — source record
- Teal Drones website · https://tealdrones.com/ — source record
- Red Cat: SRR Finalist Selection (Dec 2023) · https://ir.redcatholdings.com/news-releases/news-release-details/red-cat-holdings-selected-by-u-s-army-as-finalist-for-short-range-reconnaissance-tranche-2-drone-program
- Red Cat: SRR Prototype Funding · https://ir.redcatholdings.com/news-releases/news-release-details/red-cat-subsidiary-teal-drones-secures-1-2m-additional-funding-for-u-s-armys-short-range-reconnaissance-program
Open Questions
- Independent field-performance data — reliability, sensor utility, EW resilience, maintenance burden — is not yet publicly available.
- Long-term production volume and delivery records would confirm the Utah facility's capacity claims.
- Small-drone technology evolves quickly; current program-of-record status can shift if counter-drone, autonomy, or battery constraints advance faster than the platform.
- The SRR program has multiple vendors; Black Widow's share of total procurement is not publicly specified.