AUSA 2025: Cummings Aerospace Hellhound S3 demonstrates longer reach

Cummings Aerospace has recently completed a flight test demonstrating the extended-range capability of its Hellhound S3 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)/loitering munition.

The S3, a variant within Cummings’ Hellhound family of UAVs developed as an end-to-end weapon system, is a vertical-launch, fixed-wing ‘kamikaze drone’ that can be modified to meet the demands of the mission, allowing soldiers to quickly switch between warhead, electronic warfare or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) payloads.

During the test, which took place on 18 September 2025 at Pendleton UAS Range in Oregon, the man-portable Hellhound S3 flew more than 30 km with an inert warhead and landed with more than 50% fuel remaining, indicating a potential maximum range exceeding 60 km.

The Hellhound S3 has been designed by Cummings to compete for the US Army’s upcoming Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO) programme. It is built using additive manufacturing (3D printing) for speed and efficiency and uses readily available, US Department of Defense-approved commercial off-the-shelf materials as well as plug-and-play software.

The Hellhound S3 all-up round (vehicle, launch canister and ground control system) weighs less than 25 lb (11.3 kg). Interestingly the system’s carry case also becomes its launch stand, allowing single-soldier deployment and enhancing infantry mobility.

Speaking to ESD at the 2025 Association of the US Army show in Washington, DC, on 13 October, Sheila Cummings, president and CEO of the company, noted that the September Hellhound S3 test has allowed Cummings to update the projected range of the system from a previously expected range of 40 km.

She explained that the system is currently at around Technology Readiness Level 7 (TRL-7: prototype demonstration in an operational environment).

“To get to [TRL] -8 and -9, you really have to be executing with customers in customer environments,” Cummings explained, “so we’re participating in as many customer demonstration events as possible, and responding to a lot of opportunities where we can provide a number of Hellhound vehicles to customers for experimentation.”

Modularity is key to the design, said Cummings, “and so we’re demonstrating that modularity with the different subsystems that we’re integrating, the different payloads, different radios, different solutions for GPS-denied and -contested environments. What we can sell to US customers may be a different variant than what we can sell to international customers due to ITAR and export restrictions, so we have a myriad of subsystems and solutions that we can provide in terms of a Hellhound S3 variant to customers.”

Cummings confirmed that the company’s facilities in Huntsville, Alabama, are ready to gear up for production and have been demonstrated to Manufacturing Readiness Level 7 (MRL-7), whereby material specifications are approved, materials are available to meet a planned pilot line build schedule and manufacturing processes and procedures have been demonstrated in a production-representative environment.

Given that the Hellhound S3 can be substantially manufactured through additive manufacturing, Cummings said there is ample opportunity for distributed production where production of the system can be licensed with companies internationally. She said the company is looking around the world beyond the US for potential customers, including in Japan, Australia, Ukraine and India.

Moving forward, Cummings noted that the company is looking to demonstrate a counter-UAV capability with the Hellhound S3, given that its turbojet engine gives a documented top speed of 618 km/h and allows it to chase and destroy Group 2 and 3 UAVs. Cummings is consequently looking to partners to progress that capability beyond what the company can do with its own flight tests.

The company will also continue flight testing to validate its automatic target recognition algorithms and to continue developing hunter-killer concepts of operations for the system.