Army awards AV LASSO award, joining Textron, Uvision in prototyping competition

WASHINGTON — Aerovironment (AV) announced today that the company was awarded a prototyping contract for the Army’s Low-Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO) program. 

In a release, AV unveiled that it will be providing its Switchblade 400 product, a portable, anti-armor loitering munition with medium-range. 

“Known as the ‘Lightweight Tank Destroyer,’ and sized to fit common launch tubes, Switchblade 400 enables a sensor-to-shooter concept of operations that allows a single soldier to detect, identify, and engage targets through a unified, networked architecture — shortening decision timelines while increasing precision, speed, and operational flexibility at the tactical edge,” AV’s release read. 

According to justification books outlining the Army’s fiscal 2027 goals, the LASSO program is designed to equip Mobile Brigade Combat Teams with a “man-portable weapon” that has “point, long range and direct fire effects” capable of destroying tanks, light armored vehicles and other targets while “producing minimal collateral damage” in all sorts of terrains. 

The same books indicate that the Army is looking to spend $109.5 million to acquire 95 LASSO systems in FY27. For FY26, the service budgeted $67.8 million on 103 LASSO systems. 

AV’s announcement comes after Israeli defense company Uvision and US company Mistral announced the companies were selected to move forward with the competition with a prototyping contract in January for Uvision’s Hero 90 loitering munition. About a month later, Textron was awarded a prototyping contract in February for its Damocles system. 

According to a release from Uvision and Mistral, the Hero 90 “features multiple warhead configurations including anti-armor and high explosive,” adding that the system is “backpack-portable” and has AI-assisted tracking and electro-optical/infra-red sensors to “ensure precision in complex environments.” 

Separately, Textron’s Damocles is incorporated into a vertical take-off and landing drone, meaning that no launch or recovery equipment is needed, per the company’s release. The Damocles is “equipped with Textron Systems’ advanced GEN2 Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP), [which] is a cutting-edge system designed to deliver decisive lethality in peer warfare environments,” the release continued. 

The press releases from AV, Uvision and Textron did not disclose dollar amounts for the contracts. All three of the solutions offer a modular systems open-architecture approach, meaning other payloads can be added on — both kinetic and non-kinetic. 

“The Army’s trust in the Switchblade family has been earned through years of real-world use by soldiers who rely on these systems every day,” Jimmy Jenkins, executive vice president of Precision Strike and Defense Systems at AV said in today’s release. “That trust reflects a clear operational need for precision, speed, and adaptability at the tactical edge — capabilities the Switchblade family is designed to deliver as missions and threats continue to change.”