Army awards up to $7B in sprawling counter-drone IDIQ

WASHINGTON — Army acquisition leaders and Joint Interagency Task Force 401 officials announced today that the service awarded multiple contracts worth up to $7 billion for counter-drone capabilities.

The contracts, which the Army began awarding Monday, are part of an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) vehicle, the leaders said. The contracts will support the Pentagon’s drone and counter-drone marketplace, as well as its Domestic Shield program — a project aimed at protecting US military installations and critical infrastructure from threats posed by small drones.

It will also support “other counter-UAS [unmanned aerial system] requirements” across the federal government, Brent Ingraham, the Army’s Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology ASA(ALT), told reporters today ahead of the announcement. 

“These vehicles we awarded yesterday span a range of counter-UAS capabilities — from sensors to effectors to C2 [command and control] systems. [They] really give us options as newer requirements emerge. The Army wants competition. The JIATF-401 team wants competition. We want to bring better technology forward every day, and we don’t want to be locked into a single vendor as that threat evolves,” Ingraham said. “We’ve laid the contracting foundation before the next requirement hits.” 

The Army awarded the following companies under the IDIQ:

• $500 million base for Allen Control Systems
• $500 million base for Digital Force Technologies
• $500 million base for DroneShield
• $250 million base for Echodyne Corp 
• $500 million base for Napatree Technology 
• $250 million base for PVP Advanced EO Systems
• $500 million base for RADA Technologies, LLC
• $150 million for SmartShooter Inc
• $500 million base for SRC 
• $500 million base for L3Harris WESCAM

The Army did not detail what kind of capabilities each company will provide. However Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, JIATF-401’s commanding general, told reporters that the service hopes to build a “layered defense” capable of detecting, tracking, identifying, mitigating and capturing drones.

Rather than relying on a single “system of systems,” the Army is buying multiple interoperable systems to perform those functions, Ross said.

“There’s no silver bullet. I think at times in the past, people thought that we could just down-select to a really good counter-UAS capability and give one to everybody,” Ross said. “What we’ve seen is that there is no single solution.”

Ingraham and Ross said the Army will utilize multiple acquisition channels to facilitate buys — such as commercial solutions openings, a Common Command and Control Enterprise License Agreement, existing service contracts and the Pentagon’s drone and counter-drone marketplaces. 

Through the marketplace, soldiers, other federal agencies and allied nations can purchase various counter-drone capabilities, Ingraham said. He said he foresees the counter-drone marketplace being just as successful as the Army’s drone marketplace, which to date has made over $800 million in sales.

Further, Ross said the marketplace will help to scale the number of drones available for purchase as the demand for such systems “exceeds available supply right now.”

“What we’re trying to do through the marketplace is to connect those producers with customers so they can see that true demand across the United States, then also with our partners and allies,” Ross said. “A large IDIQ contract will allow companies to raise additional capital to build up their inventory because they have a reasonable expectation that we’re going to continue to partner with them.”

Neither Ingraham nor Ross answered questions about when the systems are expected to be delivered or to whom.

Separately, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and JIATF-401 signed a memorandum of understanding today to improve information sharing on drone threats. According to a NNSA announcement, the memorandum will share data from its counter-drone test events with the task force, and in turn JIATF-401 will do the same.

“Together, we will reduce duplicative testing, accelerate the fielding of effective C-UAS capabilities, and strengthen protection of critical national security facilities,” the NNSA announcement said. “Increased collaboration will help participating organizations make better use of taxpayer funding while accelerating the evaluation and fielding of advanced C-UAS technologies.”