US funds C‑UAS push

A $500 quadcopter can force a base to burn through missiles that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that mismatch is now driving Pentagon budget choices for fiscal year 2027. The Defense Department’s new counter-drone task force is seeking more than $580 million in research, development, test, and evaluation funding to speed up fixes for small-drone threats. (defensedaily.com) This is not a brand-new problem inside the Pentagon. The Army was named the Defense Department’s executive agent for countering small drones in February 2020, with orders to build joint standards, doctrine, and equipment for drone threats in Groups 1, 2, and 3. (dod-executiveagent.osd.mil) What changed is the pace. A Defense Department memo dated August 27, 2025 said the old Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office would be shut down and replaced by Joint Interagency Task Force 401, which reports to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and is meant to “outpace the threat” with faster delivery and broader authority. (media.defense.gov) That memo used unusually blunt language for a Pentagon reorganization. It said the small-drone threat is growing “exponentially,” that too many Defense Department offices are working on the problem without being connected to each other, and that the department needs more mobility and affordability in counter-drone systems. (media.defense.gov) Congress had already been warned where the friction points were. A Congressional Research Service report from March 31, 2025 said lawmakers were weighing not just the threat itself, but also the cost of counter-drone operations, the department’s testing capacity, and the technical maturity of proposed systems. (congress.gov) The White House added homeland pressure on June 6, 2025, when Executive Order 14305 on “Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty” said the United States needed better protection for critical infrastructure, mass gatherings, military sites, and sensitive government operations from unlawful drone use. (govinfo.gov) That is why industry is leaning into cheaper, stackable defenses instead of one perfect interceptor. Moog says its defense business now centers on turreted weapon systems and counter-unmanned aircraft systems, and in February 2026 it announced a collaboration with radar company Echodyne to speed up integrated weapon-and-radar solutions. (moog.com) The company’s pitch is modularity, which is defense jargon for Lego-like parts that can be swapped without rebuilding the whole vehicle. In a January 2024 live-fire test with BAE Systems, a Moog Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform turret on an Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle detected, tracked, identified, and defeated small drones using 30 millimeter proximity rounds. (baesystems.com) That same BAE test showed what the Pentagon now wants more of: one package that ties together radar, command-and-control software, a cannon, and a vehicle chassis that can accept more than 30 turret types. Moog said its part of that package also included Leonardo DRS radars and Northrop Grumman’s 30 millimeter XM914 cannon, which are components already common to the Army’s Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system. (baesystems.com) The budget request and the product designs are answering the same battlefield math. If drones keep getting cheaper, smaller, and more numerous, the winning counter-drone system is less likely to be a single exquisite weapon and more likely to be a layered kit that crews can bolt on, reload fast, and afford to use every day. (defensedaily.com) (media.defense.gov)