Army awaiting 100-plus Switchblade 600 attack drones

AUSA 2023 — The US Army has placed an initial order for scores of AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600 loitering munitions — like those the Pentagon has sent to Ukraine’s front lines — with the aim to have them in American soldiers’ hands as quickly as possible, according to a senior official.

The Army opted to acquire the weapon as part of a new lethal unmanned systems requirement and after its decision to initiate a Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO) program. Now, after Congress approved a reprogramming order, the service has inked a deal with AeroVironment for more than 100 of their drones that are designed to travel dozens of miles and loiter for more than 40 minutes before attacking armored targets like tanks, the head of Army acquisition, Doug Bush, told Breaking Defense and another outlet on Wednesday. 

He did not disclose when the Army expects to receive those drones, but said once they do, the systems are likely bound for soldiers at the company level. The service, Bush said, is still “working though that.”

Although the Switchblade 600 is the pick for LASSO Increment I, that’s not all for the program. The Army is eyeing follow up phases to make the program competitive and see what other loitering drones are out there.

“There’ll be entry points for other vendors, potentially, because there’s so much innovation in that space,” Bush said. “We can’t tie ourselves to one indefinitely.”

The Pentagon doesn’t always publicize how many Switchblades — which come in the smaller 300 variation as well — it is sending to Ukraine in aid packages, but by February 2023 the Defense Department said it had provided “over 700 Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems,” it noted in a fact sheet at the time.

Loitering drones, like the Switchblade 600, provide soldiers with an advanced capability to attack tanks and other armored vehicles at their weakest spot, the top. However, these weapons are not a panacea. 

“There’s an impression you can get from watching YouTube videos that may not match reality,” Bush said. “You might see the one attack out of 30, where the little drone with the RPG got lucky and worked, but you didn’t see the other 29 where it got jammed and crashed [or] got shot down.”

Regardless, the threat from loitering munitions is real and one the Army is looking at from a defensive perspective as well. It’s also one of the reasons for the service changing course on its M1 Abrams modernization programs.

“We want to create a vehicle with enough (size, weight, and power) .. to enable future capabilities like an integrated active protection system, probably a radar directed energy, because just the threats are multiplying,” Bush said.