North Texas' Delta Black Aerospace Partners With Taqtile to Modernize Maintenance for Military Drones

Delta Black Aerospace, a McKinney-based defense manufacturer of next-gen, mission-critical unmanned aerial systems, has announced a strategic partnership with Seattle-based Taqtile, creator of the Manifest digital work instruction platform. The collaboration aims to modernize sustainment operations and “redefine how advanced military systems are maintained at the tactical edge,” Delta Black said.

Via the collaboration, Delta Black said it will integrate Taqtile’s Manifest platform across its manufacturing and maintenance ecosystem. That includes the development of Delta Black’s flagship platform—the RAIDER 330 drone seen in a rendering above.

With over 28 hours of endurance, 100-plus pounds of usable payload, and fully autonomous operations including shipboard takeoff and landing, the RAIDER 330 is being designed to achieve “operational dominance,” Delta Black says. Calling it “the mission-ready tactical UAS modern warfighters demand,” the company says the drone is being engineered for GPS-denied, austere, and maritime environments. Optimized for ISR, logistics, targeting, and more, the drone features a hybrid-electric propulsion system and VTOL capabilities that Delta Black says will deliver “exceptional performance, reliability, and efficiency in complex environments.”

Delta Black was founded in 2024 by CEO Clay Kroschel, a Marine Corps veteran with extensive experience in military intelligence and unmanned aerial vehicles. He was previously the director of international business and strategy for Shield AI. Before that, he was a director of flight operations at Martin UAV and the CEO of Houston-based Unmanned Ad-Hoc Industries.

Rendering of the RAIDER 330 drone from Delta Black Aerospace performing a mission. [Video still: Delta Black]

Transforming static manuals

By collaborating with Taqtile, Delta Black said it aims to transform static manuals into interactive, AI-enabled workflows—resulting in a connected Intelligent Field Sustainment environment “where every maintainer, anywhere in the world, has instant access to mission-critical knowledge and support.”

“We’re applying the same engineering discipline that drives our airframe development to our sustainment model,” Delta Black Chief Technology Officer Jeff Lydecker said in a statement. “Integrating Manifest ensures that every maintainer and operator benefits from the same digital precision and repeatability we design into every RAIDER 330 platform. It’s about sustaining readiness at the speed of technology.”

Travis Bramwell, VP of operations at Delta Black, said that by bringing Manifest into his company’s production and field sustainment processes, “we’re giving technicians instant access to expertise that keeps aircraft mission-ready anywhere they deploy.”

Rendering of a RAIDER 330 drone swarm. [Image: Delta Black]

Aligning with DoD modernization priorities

The Delta Black-Taqtile collaboration is meant to align with the U.S. Department of Defense’s modernization priorities around digital engineering, right-to-repair, and resilient sustainment, the North Texas company said. Together, the companies aim to demonstrate how digital work instruction technology can drive real-world readiness gains and cost efficiencies for next-gen unmanned systems.

“This partnership exemplifies how defense innovators are embracing commercial software to deliver faster, safer, and more effective operations,” Taqtile CEO Dirck Schou Jr. said in a statement. “Manifest will give Delta Black’s teams the ability to capture and deploy expert knowledge, reduce downtime, and modernize sustainment operations across the full lifecycle of their platforms.”