US counter-drone task force backs a mix of systems with contracts capped near $7 billion

The board-deck shorthand of $7 billion for drone defense misstates what was announced. The figure is a combined ceiling across a set of enterprise contracts ^[1], a cap on what can be ordered through them. Business Insider's account does not name the companies, say how many there are, or give how long the contracts run, so nobody outside the task force can yet estimate how the money will be split among suppliers.

The breadth is deliberate. "I'll tell you there isn't one answer to the drone threat," Brent Ingraham, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisitions, logistics, and technology, told reporters. "So we didn't build around one solution." ^[4] Officials said the contracts give agencies more options going forward instead of relying completely on a specific company or system ^[5]. In my view, the task force has traded the simplicity of one standard system for fit to local conditions and independence from any single supplier.

A skeptic would say a menu of contracts is a way of putting off a choice, and that nine US service members killed in two drone attacks ^[1] argue for making one. An investigation into the Jordan attack, obtained by Business Insider, found the military was insufficiently prepared for the threat ^[12]. Brig. Gen. Matthew Ross, the task force's director, framed the contracts around availability. "I think it solves a couple of problems," he said. "Number one is it makes sure that these capabilities that are going to be proliferated a ton are available to our formations." ^[6] The contracts also widen access to systems that may have been seen as specific to the Defense Department ^[7]. It is too early to know whether equipment reaches units faster this way than it would through a single program.

This quarter's decision is to put many suppliers on contract at once. Next quarter's consequence lands on the buyers. Officials want units to build layered defenses that detect, disable and destroy drones at different ranges ^[14]. I'd expect competition among vendors to move to the individual order, with each unit choosing the layer it lacks and taking on more of the work of making several companies' equipment run together. Ross described how far apart those orders can be. "If you think about 11th Airborne in Alaska or 1st Armored Division, both Army units, they have very different needs in terms of counter-UAS capability," Ross said ^[13].