The Black Widow extends the new-defense leg of DEPLOY's drone cohort into the soldier-borne ISR tier (alongside the FPV-strike Neros and the larger ISR/strike systems), and is a clean worked example of the verified-vs-claimed framework applied to a defense-procurement narrative.
✔
Its load-bearing fact is verified: the Black Widow won the US Army Short Range Reconnaissance Program of Record in a production selection announced November 19, 2024, displacing the incumbent Skydio.
Price
No reviewed price is on record. We do not treat unverified analyst estimates as pricing data. There is no consumer price. The Black Widow is military procurement (US Army Short Range Reconnaissance program), not a consumer product, so DEPLOY records zero price points. The ~$12.9M LRIP figure is a contract aggregate, not a per-unit price.
Availability
Internal use only
This is military procurement, not a consumer product. From Teal Drones (a Red Cat Holdings subsidiary, NASDAQ: RCAT), the Black Widow is the US Army Short Range Reconnaissance program-of-record drone, at low-rate production.
Real-world status
The Teal Black Widow is a soldier-borne ISR rucksack quadcopter from Teal Drones, a subsidiary of Red Cat Holdings (NASDAQ: RCAT): a hand-launched, foldable Group-1 quadcopter for single-operator short-range reconnaissance with a Teledyne FLIR Hadron 640R+ EO/IR payload and FLIR's Prism AI stack. Its load-bearing fact is verified: the Black Widow won the US Army Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) Program of Record in a production selection announced November 19, 2024, displacing the incumbent Skydio. Three aggregator framings are corrected here. The product is the Teal Black Widow, not 'Teal 2'. The contract scope is smaller than commonly framed: the low-rate initial production contract is about $12.9M per a US Army FOIA disclosure (not the larger management-framing figures), and the often-cited 5,880-systems number is the Army's stated five-year objective, explicitly subject to change, not an obligated quantity. And the 'Black Hornet alternative' framing is incorrect: the Black Widow is a different, larger class than Teledyne FLIR's roughly 70-gram Black Hornet nano-UAV, and it replaced Skydio on the platoon-level SRR program, not the Black Hornet. On autonomy it is primarily manually piloted with assistive autonomy (forward obstacle avoidance, a radio-off stealth mode), so any 'autonomous drone' characterization is an overclaim.
⚠
Three corrections: (1) the product is the Teal Black Widow, not 'Teal 2'; (2) the LRIP contract is ~$12.9M per a US Army FOIA disclosure, not the larger management-framing figures, and 5,880 systems is the Army's five-year objective (subject to change), not an obligated quantity; (3) it is not a 'Black Hornet alternative' (a different, larger class than the ~70g Black Hornet nano-UAV; it replaced Skydio). It is also manually piloted with assistive autonomy, not autonomous.
⊘
There is no consumer price. The Black Widow is military procurement, and the ~$12.9M LRIP figure is a contract aggregate, not a per-unit price, so DEPLOY records zero price points.
Soldier-ISR vs the SRR incumbent vs FPV strike
Teal Black Widow
Skydio X10
Neros Archer
Role
Soldier-ISR (SRR)
🟢verified
Enterprise/public-safety
🟢verified
FPV strike
🟢verified
Autonomy
Manually-piloted + assistive
🟢verified
Genuinely self-flying
🟢verified
Remotely-piloted
🟢verified
SRR relationship
Won SRR (Nov 2024)
🟢verified
Displaced incumbent
🟢verified
Not SRR (Army PBAS)
🟢verified
Pricing
No consumer price
⊘absence
Quote-based (no record)
⊘absence
No consumer price
⊘absence
Sources: DEPLOY registry, Red Cat Holdings (IR) / SEC, US Army FOIA (via reporting)
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I buy a Teal Black Widow?
No⊘absence. The Black Widow is military procurement (US Army SRR program), not a consumer product; there is no consumer price.
Is the Black Widow autonomous?
No🟢verified. It is primarily a manually piloted soldier-ISR drone with assistive autonomy (forward obstacle avoidance, FLIR Prism, a radio-off stealth mode); any 'autonomous drone' framing is an overclaim.
How big is the Black Widow's Army contract?
The low-rate initial production contract is about $12.9M per a US Army FOIA disclosure🟢verified, not the larger management-framing figures. The 5,880-systems number is the Army's five-year objective🟠claimed, explicitly subject to change, not an obligated quantity.
Is the Black Widow a Black Hornet alternative?
No🟢verified. It is a different, larger class than Teledyne FLIR's ~70g Black Hornet nano-UAV, and it replaced Skydio on the platoon-level SRR program, not the Black Hornet.
Pricing and availability are tagged verified or claimed against primary sources. Manufacturer targets are reported as targets, not prices you can pay today.