The US Army’s sweeping new deal with Anduril includes an $87 million effort to link counter-drone systems so troops can better spot, track, and destroy enemy drones — a threat growing on and off the battlefield.
The Army-led Joint Interagency Task Force 401 selected Anduril’s Lattice software for its new command and control system. JIATF-401, established last summer, has been working to write the rules for countering drones in partnership with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. Sharing approved systems, particularly a common software that everyone can use, has been a priority for the task force.
The task force announced the decision last Friday, saying that a common backbone for its drone defenses was necessary as uncrewed aerial systems become an increasing threat.
Anduril’s Lattice is expected to allow personnel from across the military and federal agents to share and see each other’s data, have a clearer picture of what threats exist, and better coordinate responses to drone attacks, the service said in its press statement.
On Monday, Anduril said the task force’s command and control system with Lattice will involve numerous sensors for detecting drones and interceptors for stopping them.
Legacy weapon systems and new assets will be able to connect to the platform, “enabling distributed detection, tracking, classification, and ultimately engagement of UAS threats,” Park Hughes, Anduril’s managing director for air defense, said.
US Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Donovan E. Melendez
Lattice is also part of the Army’s new Next Generation Command and Control system, which the service has been testing since last year. NGC2 is being built with a Silicon Valley-style “move fast, fail fast, fix fast” approach, which the Army and other services have said is necessary to field new systems quickly.
The task force’s $87 million agreement falls under a much larger contract the Army also announced Friday. That agreement, worth up to $20 billion over the next decade, allows any federal agency to purchase Anduril’s off-the-shelf systems, the company’s chief business officer, Matthew Steckman, told reporters.
“The modern battlefield is increasingly defined by software,” Gabe Chiulli, chief technology officer for the Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, said in a release. “To maintain our advantage, we must be able to acquire and deploy software capabilities with speed and efficiency.”
Steckman said that while the contract isn’t the first of its kind, it was more complex because Anduril makes a wide variety of products, from software to drones and wearable artificial intelligence goggles, that the government can buy. The Army alone has 120 existing contracts with Anduril already, and the new deal is intended to help streamline how the company and the government do business.
“By establishing both the common C2 [command and control] software platform and the common process for the government to procure, deploy, and sustain ever-improving counter-UAS software at scale, the JIATF is very much accelerating the nation’s response to the UAS threat,” Hughes said.
The Army and other military services are shifting their approach, aiming to reduce what leaders see as bureaucratic hurdles in how weapons are tested, funded, and procured. That shift includes buying commercially available systems, such as software, drones, and counter-drone technology, from vendors like Anduril.
Officials have said the changing approach is designed to cut costs, speed up the acquisition process, and rapidly procure the weapons that troops need sooner rather than later.
