On the battlefield of the near future, Sheila Cummings envisions a cutting-edge solution for the Infantry.
“We asked, what if a Soldier could pull a mini missile out of their rucksack, fly it 20 kilometers at half the speed of sound, let it loiter overhead, then take out tanks?”
The question, posed by Cummings, CEO of Cummings Aerospace, captures the vision behind the company’s entry into the U.S. Army’s upcoming Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO) competition.
The program’s ambitious goal, according to the Army’s 2025 public budget request, is nothing less than to “make Infantry Brigades as lethal as Armored Brigades,” and enable “precision engagement against near peer tanks” as well as other threats.
As the U.S. military prepares for potential conflicts in the Pacific, the Huntsville, Alabama, based company believes its Hellhound S3 drone is well positioned to meet the Army’s needs.
This turbojet-powered, 3D-printed kamikaze drone flies at half the speed of sound and in January 2025 completed a successful flight at the U.S. Army’s Expeditionary Warrior Experiment in Fort Moore, Georgia. The test validated the S3’s ability to operate in tactically relevant environments.
“The battlefield of tomorrow isn’t just about hitting the target—it’s about hitting it faster than your adversary can react,” said Cummings. “With Hellhound S3, we’ve developed a system that collapses decision time from minutes to seconds. If infantry units face fleeting targets, that time differential becomes the margin between mission success and mission failure.”
The system has flown more than a dozen times. In one test in Oregon in early January, Hellhound topped out at a speed of 384 mph—significantly faster than traditional quadcopters and propeller-driven drones.
The company’s engineers have also made a point of keeping affordability front and center.
“We’ve heard Army leadership say they want ‘affordable mass’—the ability to send a lot of capability downrange without breaking the bank,” Cummings said. “That’s exactly what we’ve designed Hellhound to deliver.”
The concept of “affordable mass” is central to the Army’s tactical thinking as it prepares for potential conflicts with near-peer adversaries. Rather than relying solely on a small number of exquisite, expensive platforms, military leaders have emphasized the need for numerous, lower-cost systems that can overwhelm enemy defenses through sheer numbers while remaining fiscally sustainable.
Hellhound epitomizes this concept through its innovative manufacturing approach. Most of the airframe is 3D printed and uses U.S. Department of Defense-approved commercial off the shelf parts. In addition to keeping costs extremely low, this approach to manufacturing also enables the company to rapidly scale production in its own facility, and by licensing production to U.S. government approved defense contractors to meet the warfighter’s demand.
“We’re not talking about an exquisite manufacturing approach that can produce a few dozen systems a year for millions of dollars,” said Cummings. “We’re talking about manufacturing at the kind of scale you haven’t seen since World War II – basically printing out thousands of Hellhound S3 vehicles a year for a very affordable unit cost.”
Speed and affordability are only part of Hellhound’s battlefield advantage. The drone also features an innovative interchangeable, twist-and-lock nose that gives Soldiers the flexibility to adapt the payload depending on the mission.
In just a few minutes, and with no tools required, a Soldier can change out an armor-piercing warhead with an Electronic Warfare jamming package, or an Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) payload, all while providing the operator the ability to abort or redirect as battlefield conditions evolve. “The true advantage isn’t just speed or modular design—it’s how those capabilities translate to battlefield dominance,” said Kelly Francis, Cummings Aerospace Executive Vice President. “When you can do things like 3D print replacement parts on demand in a forward-deployed location, swap mission payloads, and put a loitering munition over a target area at half the speed of sound, you’re giving IBCT’s (Infantry Brigade Combat Teams) the asymmetric advantage they deserve.”