Target Arm

Market position

Target Arm positions itself around a capability it describes as difficult for others to deliver: launching and recovering drones from platforms that do not stop moving. Third-party listings place it in the aviation and aerospace component manufacturing sector as a small company with fewer than ten employees, alongside comparably positioned drone and autonomy firms such as PrecisionHawk, Flyability, Percepto, Shield AI, DroneDeploy and Skydio.

The systems are drone-agnostic, supporting both rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft, and platform-agnostic, mounting to land, sea, air or space vehicles without vehicle redesign. Target Arm cites fully automated one-button launch and recovery, sub-millimetre accuracy, operation at all vehicle speeds including convoy overwatch up to 65 mph, automatic drone recall at low battery, onboard recharging and relaunch, and launch-and-recovery cycles of multiple UAVs every 15 seconds. It also claims package delivery cost reductions of up to 95 percent.

Technology

Core hardware comprises the Ralar robotic arm, which physically captures a drone in flight and places it into a container or multi-drone magazine for recharging and relaunch, and Tular, a patented pin-array capture device that drones fly themselves into and lock onto mid-air; Tular is described as a roll-on, bolt-on sealed unit integrating launch, recovery, charging and storage at speeds up to 65 mph. Software includes TRACKR sensor fusion for AI-enhanced drone tracking and sub-millimetre localization, TurboFly, a wrap-around flight controller providing autopilot for any drone, and Maestro for multi-drone mission control, moving-map tracking and secure communications. Reported web and infrastructure technologies include Wix, WordPress, Mailchimp, Google Cloud, Sentry, React and Office 365.

Go-to-market

The company sells directly through its website with a staged assessment-pilot-enterprise order process, and works through integration partnerships such as ReconRig's custom trailers and BIB Technologies' autonomous electric delivery vehicles. It competes for federal SBIR contracts and cooperative research agreements, leverages its SDVOSB certification for small-business set-asides, and markets at defense trade events including AUSA 2025.

Defense and government buyers form a primary market, with described applications on NGCV and SMET autonomous platforms, M1 Abrams tanks, nuclear convoy protection, special operations riverine and tactical vehicles, C-17 arsenal aircraft, counter-UAS and electronic warfare payloads, and autonomous air-to-air refueling. Commercial targets include package and last-mile delivery, first responders and disaster relief, oil, gas and energy inspection, agriculture, land and livestock management, and event protection.

Geography

Operations are in Connecticut, United States: an R&D lab in New Milford and administrative corporate headquarters in Ridgefield. Third-party data places its workforce entirely in North America.

History

Founded in 2017 and led by founder Jeffrey A. McChesney, Target Arm announced a strategic partnership with BIB Technologies in October 2020 to jointly develop autonomous electric delivery vehicles with drones operating at highway speeds. In January 2025 it announced an AFWERX SBIR Phase I contract and a $2 million Army SBIR contract for its Arsenal-Modular Mission Payload, and a partnership with Recon Rig for drone-equipped custom trailers. Prototype build of ReconRig's T.R.Ex unit with Ralar began in May 2025, the company presented at the Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs Accelerator 2025 Demo Day in June 2025, and it showed the Ralar Modular Mission Payload at the AUSA 2025 exposition in October 2025. Rob Africk was appointed CFO in November 2025 and co-founder Ryan Bigham was promoted to CTO later that month. In June 2026 the company announced a multi-year CRADA with U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC.

Risks & controversies

Publicly available third-party data on the company is inconsistent: employee counts are reported as 1-10, 2-10 and approximately 8, annual revenue is estimated at both roughly $567,000 and $1M-$10M, and total funding figures differ materially across aggregators. Several of the hardware products, including Ralar 2 and Tular, are listed as coming soon rather than shipping, and the business depends substantially on U.S. defense contracting outcomes.