Palladyne AI (NASDAQ:PDYN), a U.S.-based defense and industrial technology company commercializing embedded AI, collaborative autonomy, and advanced avionics for defense markets, today announced it has been invited to participate in Northern Strike 26-2, a premier U.S. Department of War joint exercise, where the company will execute a high-impact validation exercise of its next-generation swarm autonomy platform, further solidifying its position in the rapidly expanding autonomous defense market.

Hosted August 2-14, 2026, at the National All-Domain Warfighting Center (NADWC), Northern Strike is a Joint National Training Capability (JNTC)-accredited exercise involving more than 9,000 participants operating across contested, multi-domain environments. The exercise serves as a critical validation environment for emerging technologies and a gateway for transition into operational programs of record. NADWC Camp Grayling was selected as the Drone Dominance Range in the recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

This warfighter validation and exercise will feature Palladyne's Gremlin-X™ mini bomber UAV operating alongside additional unmanned aerial systems. The exercise will showcase at least three UAV OEM partners, all operating fully autonomous collaboration using SwarmOS within a unified Decentralized Embodied Collaborative Autonomy (DECA) framework. Palladyne AI will conduct the exercise on a single Android Team Awareness Kit (ATAK) managing four UAVs. This multi-platform integration highlights Palladyne's ability to deliver true cross-OEM interoperability, autonomy, and collaboration without requiring centralized orchestration, one of the most critical and unsolved challenges in modern defense systems.

Key capabilities to be demonstrated include cross-platform swarm collaboration across multiple UAV classes and manufacturers, decentralized decision-making at the edge that is resilient to denied or degraded communications, real-time mission adaptation across dynamic battlefield conditions, and single-interface command and control enabling rapid deployment with reduced operator burden.