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The End of Battery Swaps? QU6 Wireless Power Tech Targets Army Drone Endurance Gaps.
Quaze Technologies has launched its QU6 wireless power architecture, allowing unmanned systems to recharge autonomously across land, air, and sea. The platform, introduced at AUSA 2025, could reshape how U.S. forces sustain drones and robotic systems in contested environments.
On October 13, 2025, Quaze Technologies launched QU6, a turnkey wireless power architecture that lets unmanned systems recharge autonomously across land, air, and sea, with commercial debut at AUSA 2025 in Washington. The release highlights years of trials in harsh environments and OEM collaborations that shaped a modular, robot-agnostic design intended to accelerate fielding. “It’s the fuel pump robotics has been waiting for,” said CEO Xavier Bidaut, framing QU6 as energy infrastructure for persistent autonomy.
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QU6 enables autonomous contactless recharging for drones, robots, and sensors across land, sea and air (Picture source: Quaze Technologies).
At the technical core is wide-surface magnetic resonance: a QU6 emitter drives energy into a surface that creates a controlled resonant field; compact receivers on robots harvest that energy without contact or precise alignment, while software manages safe, efficient transfer and power distribution. Company literature describes four components working in concert, minimizing losses across the surface and enabling uniform access to energy wherever a platform touches down. This approach supports simultaneous charging of multiple devices and tolerates debris on the surface.
The architecture has been exercised in austere conditions. During the joint Norway and U.S. Arctic Warrior Experiment 2025 with NORSOCOM and USSOCOM, Quaze and partners demonstrated continuous remote drone charging over three days and effective transfer through more than 10 centimeters of snow using foldable surfaces on snowmobiles and utility vehicles. The demonstration also showed “safe for human” wireless power for soldier-worn systems, underscoring suitability for close-quarters use.
QU6 is domain-agnostic. Under a development agreement with Vatn Systems, the company is embedding a QU6 receiver in Skelmir S-6 autonomous underwater vehicles so AUVs can dock and recharge wirelessly at remote subsea points, removing failure-prone wet connectors and shrinking maintenance burdens. In the air domain, a collaboration with L3Harris yielded a 360-degree tubular charging application that recharges vertically stored drones inside cylindrical launch and recovery canisters, enabling rapid cycling for persistent ISR. On land, Rheinmetall Canada is integrating Quaze’s surface charging within the Drone Swarm Tactical OverWatch module on Mission Master UGS to keep multiple quadcopters on station without human touch.
How it works matters for integration: QU6’s modular transmitters and receivers scale from small pads to vehicle-sized surfaces and static nodes, with open integration to OEM platforms and soldier power ecosystems such as Galvion’s BATLCHRG concept. The company positions the system as robot-agnostic, able to energize platforms from numerous defense robotics makers, and emphasizes climate resilience from arctic cold to high-temperature environments, proven during trials.
QU6 is an endurance multiplier and a logistics reducer. By eliminating manual battery swaps, cable handling, and alignment requirements, it enables dispersed units to sustain drones, ground robots, and unattended sensors from hidden surfaces that can be buried under snow, sand, or soil. This reduces exposure of personnel, compresses the human-machine ratio, and turns vehicles or fixed sites into ad hoc energy hubs that push power deeper into contested areas where resupply is risky. These effects are central to NATO experimentation with persistent ISR, communications relay, and autonomous base defense.
As of today, there are no publicly announced military operators, but the pathway to service is visible. QU6 has been trialed with Norwegian and U.S. special operations communities, and integration work is underway with U.S. and Canadian industry partners, including L3Harris, Rheinmetall Canada, Galvion, and Vatn Systems, whose AUVs support the U.S. military and allied customers. Early fielding is likely to flow through OEM programs where the wireless energy layer is embedded from the outset.
Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group.
Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.