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Counter-UAS

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Counter-UAS

Doctrine, sensors, and effectors for detecting, tracking, and defeating small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS). Encompasses both kinetic and non-kinetic approaches: radar/EO/IR detection, RF and GPS jamming, directed energy, hard-kill kinetic interceptors, and cued small-arms fire.

Operational portfolio (April 2026)

Institutional posture

jiatf-401 (Joint Interagency Task Force 401) is the Pentagon’s Army-led C-UAS capability builder. Per April 2026 reporting, JIATF-401 has committed >350M to operation-epic-fury in just the first month. Domestic spend includes the southern border and the 2026 FIFA World Cup across 11 host cities (src-counter-drone-middle-east-jiatf-2026-04).

The foundational homeland-mission instrument is the December 8, 2025 SecWar-signed jiatf-401 guidance under 10-usc-130i — directing installation-commanders to issue installation-specific SOPs within 60 days; published via DoW press release on January 26, 2026 (src-jiatf-401-counter-drone-homeland-guidance-2026-01). The guidance also names the JCU training pipeline and the jiatf-401-marketplace materiel concept.

Pentagon officials have publicly described U.S. C-UAS capability as “lagging,” and SOF News reports the U.S. has “suffered casualties and damage to high-value aircraft and military equipment” from Iranian drones (src-epic-fury-update-2026-04). tom-karako argues the drone problem has been “artificially divided” between overseas combat and homeland defense.

JIATF-401 has also led a U.S.-UK effort to establish common C-UAS data standards for interoperability (src-bumblebee-v2-ncr-counterdrone-2026-04).

Cost estimates (July 2026)

A July 9, 2026 CBO report estimated protecting the 100 most important of 824 tracked U.S. installations with a multilayered C-UAS defense (radar, RF, kinetic, handheld, C2) could cost up to **500M/year to maintain — a per-installation ceiling of ~5M/year. The CBO found the vendor base sufficient (135 responses to a DoD demonstration RFI) to restrain price growth, and cited the March 2026 Kuwait drone attack (six U.S. service members killed) and Ukraine’s drone-driven disabling of 40%+ of the Russian Black Sea Fleet as threat drivers (src-cbo-counter-drone-cost-2026-07).

FY27 budget framing

Hegseth’s April 29, 2026 house-armed-services-committee posture testimony names “drone dominance” as a top FY27 priority and frames “autonomous warfare” as a competitor-investment area, providing the budget umbrella under which JIATF-401’s >$600M is being scaled (src-hegseth-fy27-posture-testimony-2026-04). golden-dome-for-america is cited as the named homeland aerial-threat-defense program.

Procurement architecture (March-April 2026)

Two new mechanisms expanded the C-UAS procurement architecture:

Civilian regulatory baseline (May 2026)

The faa published a May 6 2026 notice of proposed rulemaking creating a new airspace designation, the Unmanned Aircraft Flight Restriction (UAFR) (src-faa-drone-rule-critical-infrastructure-2026-05). Two key implications for the C-UAS architecture:

  • Remote ID receiving capability (remote-id) is codified as the federal baseline sensing layer that any critical-infrastructure operator must already have in place before applying for airspace protection.
  • The UAFR is a legal designation only — it does not grant new detection/mitigation authority. Defeat authority still flows from 6 U.S.C. 124n, 10 U.S.C. 130i, and the legislative track below.

The UAFR is the civilian/critical-infrastructure analogue to the COUNTER Act’s military-base authority expansion.

Legislative authority track

Authority to defeat unidentified drones over U.S. territory is expanding via statute:

UK posture

UK has no equivalent of JIATF-401 or flyaway-kit for homeland counter-sUAS. British GBAD (sky-sabre ~25 km, Type 45) is small and ballistic-only at sea (src-uk-airspace-defense-gap-2024-11).

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