The Leonidas Autonomous Ground Vehicle consists of a commercial Ford F600 model truck tricked out with Kodiak’s autonomous driving software and Eprius’ high-power microwave (HPM) c-UAS platform.
"We got a lot of messages over the weekend, like, ‘Oh, you made $20 billion.’ There's no money attached to it, this is just a contract vehicle, but it reduces a lot of friction in things that just simply shouldn't have it," Anduril President Matthew Steckman said.
The challenge for Western democratic institutions is not a lack of capability — it is a structural one.
The new guidance also grants service secretaries the power to designate what facilities should have special protections against drone threats.
The Army secretary said the “end state” of such arrangements would make the US and its allies "stronger" in a future conflict where they would have to fight together.
“My interpretation of that law is that we won't let a service procure something that doesn't perform and if they want to, JIATF-401 gets to say no,” said Col. Jonathan Beha, chief of requirements for the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force.
"We've got a wide variety of counter-UAS tools, and I actually think that we need all of them, because depending on where you are or what threat you're focused on, your requirements will be slightly different,” Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, commander of JIATF 401, said.
Answering the Pentagon’s call to bolster defense industrial base.
Stacie Pettyjohn, a co-author of the new Center for New American Security study, told Breaking Defense the US should focus on three c-UAS tactics.
The Army has been tapped to oversee the new shop and close up the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office it led.