JIATF-401 Accelerates Kinetic Drone Defeat

Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401), in partnership with the U.S. Army’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive Fires (PAE Fires), completed a counter… Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401), in partnership with the U.S. Army’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive Fires (PAE Fires), completed a counter-unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) shoot-off at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, from Aug. 17–28. The event evaluated multiple defeat systems against Group 3 UAS threats to identify mature, ready-now capabilities that can rapidly transition from testing to procurement and fielding in support of urgent operational requirements. The demonstration used the common criteria for counter-UAS characterization to assess participating systems against operationally relevant threats and generate comparable performance data to inform acquisition decisions.

Based on performance against established evaluation criteria, JIATF-401 awarded a contract for Lockheed Martin’s Grizzly system. “This is exactly how JIATF-401 is designed to operate: identify an urgent warfighter need, test available solutions against a common standard, make a data-driven decision, and move immediately toward delivering the capability,” said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of JIATF-401. “When a system demonstrates that it can meet the requirement, we have to move with urgency to put that capability in the hands of our warfighters.” JIATF-401 continues to use common test standards and competitive evaluations to identify effective, ready-now counter-UAS capabilities and rapidly transition successful systems from