New Army-led task force plans to stand up digital marketplace for counter-drone tech

WASHINGTON — The Army-led Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401), responsible for overseeing tech designed to counter small drone threats against the military and other intelligence agencies, is establishing an online marketplace where military leaders and other agency heads can purchase counter-drone equipment. 

Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, the task force’s director, said Friday that there are a plethora of vendors of all shapes and sizes who are able to provide counter-unmanned aerial systems (c-UAS) solutions to the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and local law enforcement. Because of this there should be a central system in place where they can buy counter-drone tech more easily and quickly, he said. The c-UAS marketplace will coincide with a UAS marketplace that the Army is also in the midst of setting up, Ross said.

“We are going to establish a UAS and counter-UAS marketplace that will provide authoritative data on how each of these systems performs under varying conditions and allow users or customers to select a tool that’s right for them. 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,” Ross told a small group of reporters.

“We want to ensure that we provide a range of options, both to the Department of War and to our interagency partners,” he added before clarifying that the task force has not set a date for when the digital marketplace will launch nor how many systems will be available for purchase. 

The move comes nearly three months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth created the task force to replace the old service-led Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO). Unlike with the JCO, Ross will report directly to the deputy secretary of defense, have acquisition and procurement authority, and be the support organization for the department’s “forensics, exploitation, and replication” for C-sUAS, an August 27 memo announcing the task force notes.

As Breaking Defense previously reported, all department-wide c-sUAS research and development efforts will be managed by JIATF 401, and it can approve up to $50 million per c-UAS development effort. However, the development of service-specific and US Special Operations Command capabilities are exempt from the move. 

With regards to how the task force will fund the marketplace, Ross confirmed that JIATF 401 does not have a budget yet, but said funds will likely derive from a series of places including operations and maintenance; research, development, testing and evaluation; and from procurement funds. 

“I think [where] we’ll be able to see some of the greatest gains is going to be with procurement dollars, because that will allow us to put counter-UAS capability into the hands of our formations,” he said. 

Ross stayed tight-lipped about the types of drones that the marketplace will offer, but said that it will include drone-detecting capabilities such as acoustic radar tools and non-kinetic effectors like radio frequency defeat capabilities.

“Today, if we were to field a counter-UAS solution around some critical infrastructure in the US, we would likely not include an explosive warhead. So, we would want a low-collateral interceptor if we’re going to use a kinetic interceptor, opposed to an explosive solution that might be more appropriate for a combat environment,” he said. 

So far, Ross said, the task force has helped provide Northern Command with “support” for such capabilities at the southern border.

“If you look across the 1,954 mile border, I think that we do face a challenge of unmanned systems, and NORTHCOM is focused on addressing those challenges now, in conjunction with other lead federal agencies, specifically DHS,” Ross said. “What we’re working towards is an integrated, distributed sensing network that includes both passive and active sensors, and then layering in  effectors, or counter-UAS effectors that allow us to defeat a threat as it crosses the border.” 

Further, Ross said, the task force is focused on countering Group 1 and 2 drones, which are smaller platforms weighing only 20 to 55 pounds. 

“We have robust capability for countering group 3 UAS,” Ross said. “But we have not spent as much time on countering Group 1 and Group 2 UAS that we see pretty consistently across the homeland.” 

While the marketplace is still in the works, JIATF 401 plans to hold a c-UAS summit later this month to better outline how it plans on working with interagency partners to test and evaluate platforms before they are potentially added to the marketplace. 

“We want to make sure that we’ve got enduring partnership with each of those agencies, because we know this problem is going to continue to evolve over time, and we want to be able to move at the speed of relevance,” Ross said.