Dan Schere

The Defense Department would need to spend as much as $74 million to procure and install a layered counter-small unmanned aerial system to protect one military base, and as much as another $5 million each year in maintenance costs, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office. While not specific to any of the services, CBO’s analysis used a “benchmark scenario” in which it examined the key parts of a base, such as family housing and...

RTX subsidiary Raytheon is eyeing the Army's Launched Effects program as a possible future area within the U.S. military to deploy its Coyote family of unmanned aerial systems, a company representative said today.

The Army is seeking what it terms a "launcher approach" for its Launched Effects program -- a modular effects launcher of sorts that "provides a standardized interface" for LE across the air and ground domains, according to the service.

The Trump administration should have asked for the massive defense spending increases it is currently seeking a year ago, instead of now when the political headwinds on Capitol Hill have significantly increased, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee told Inside Defense last week. The Pentagon is banking on a proposed $350 billion reconciliation request to reach its $1.5 trillion topline for fiscal year 2027 and has also requested a $67 billion supplemental spending package to fund the ongoing...

The Defense Department is reprogramming $158 million in fiscal year 2026 dollars to support the Joint Interagency Task Force 401's Domestic Shield Initiative, which focuses on the use of counter unmanned aerial systems to defend critical infrastructure sites within the United States. The prior approval reprogramming action was sent to Congress on April 10, according to a document

The Army is seeking potential solutions from industry that would integrate 50mm ammunition capabilities into counter unmanned aerial systems, with the goal of tracking and defeating group 1-3 threats, according to a sources-sought notice posted this week.

The Army is surveying companies who can build a missile for less than $150,000 that can take out small unmanned aerial systems faster and at better ranges than current capability, a new notice says.

The Army wants to establish a basic ordering agreement (BOA) for Group 3 unmanned aerial systems -- those weighing between 55 and 1,320 pounds -- as it seeks to onboard commercially available platforms onto its online UAS marketplace, according to a government notice posted today. The service’s objective is to “provide an innovative and complete” Group 3 UAS that uses a Modular Open Systems Approach to facilitate interoperability for payloads and radios, while also allowing the government both...

The Army has announced a new memorandum of understanding with the Tennessee Valley Authority, which will focus on energy siting for Redstone Arsenal, AL, and Ft. Campbell, KY. The MOU, considered non-binding, establishes a loose framework for how the service plans to go about strengthening energy resilience at installations across the country and will be significantly cheaper than the previous energy installation plan from the Biden administration, officials said today. The Army-TVA MOU will “bolster grid security, address growing energy...

The 11 best performing companies in the Gauntlet I phase of the Defense Department's Drone Dominance initiative had shipped 11,440 drones as of July 30, according to DOD.