LASSO — which was a new-start program in the previous budget — is now part of the service’s Launched Effects family of systems and has been realigned under that line item in the 2026 budget.

Drone maker AeroVironment has been manufacturing Switchblade systems for the initiative. The Switchblade 600 carries high-precision optics and an anti-armor warhead. It has upwards of 40 minutes of loitering endurance, a range of 40-plus kilometers, and a “sprint speed” of 185 kilometers per hour, according to a product description from the vendor. The all-up round weighs 65 pounds.

The request for additional loitering munitions — also known as kamikaze drones or one-way attack drones because they’re designed to destroy their targets by crashing into them — in 2026 comes as officials are undertaking a new Army Transformation Initiative to modernize the force for future high-tech combat. The service is moving to divest of capabilities that are outdated and put more money into other equipment.

“The Army Transformation Initiative, or ATI, as we’ve coined it, is a strategic shift. We’re reinvesting resources to ensure our future dominance as part of the joint force,” a senior Army officials told reporters Thursday at the Pentagon during a background briefing about the budget. “We made some tough choices to shed outdated systems and programs that no longer meet our demands of the modern battlefield,” including divesting from legacy anti-tank missiles, they noted.

Kamikaze drones have played a major role in the Ukraine-Russia war, and U.S. military leaders are taking lessons from that conflict as the seek to modernize their forces.

The Army is aiming to deliver five brigade combat teams-worth of loitering munitions in fiscal 2026. The budget request includes about $68 million for 98 fire control units, 294 all-up rounds and other program elements under LASSO. Nearly $13 million in reconciliation funding would procure an additional 19 LASSO production systems.

“Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs) lack adequate proportional organic capabilities at echelon to apply immediate, point, long range, and direct fire effects to destroy tanks, light armored vehicles, hardened targets, defilade, and personnel targets, while producing minimal collateral damage in complex terrain in all environmental conditions,” officials wrote in budget justification documents.

Army leadership wants to give troops new kamikaze drones to fill that capability gap.

The man-portable LASSO is a day/night capable, lightweight, unmanned aerial anti-tank weapon that includes an all-up round and fire control system, according to an Army description of the technology.

“The LASSO range requirement is to fly less than or equal to 20km (straight line with auxiliary antenna) with a flight endurance that enables the Soldier to make multiple orbits within the IBCT typically assigned battlespace, to acquire and attack targets within and beyond current crew served and small arms fire. The range/endurance enables the unit to utilize reach back capability and maximize standoff. Unlike existing direct and indirect fire weapon systems, LASSO’s discreet payload and unique capability delivers Soldiers the ability to abort against targets in a dynamic situation (e.g., use of human shields) or prosecute targets that would have been deemed non-viable in past due to the higher collateral damage associated with alternative munitions,” according to budget documents. Follow-on increments are expected to support capabilities for company and below echelons, focusing on increased range, enhanced lethality and advanced payload options.

Officials noted that the program is aligned with ATI and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s directive for Army transformation and acquisition reform.

It’s also intended to support the Army’s transforming-in-contact initiative — an effort spearheaded by Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George with a particular focus on unmanned aerial systems, counter-UAS and electronic warfare capabilities — and expand prepositioned stocks in the Indo-Pacific region, where the U.S. military is concerned about a potential future conflict with China.

The LASSO program will use other transaction authority for contracting, which is intended to cut through bureaucratic red tape and help the military field new technologies faster than traditional acquisition processes. Officials also intend to award up to four hardware contracts to modernize the industrial base and generate domestic ammunition stockpiles, according to budget documents.

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There have been directives from top levels of Army leadership to cut down on business systems and automate capabilities where possible.

“It’s a big push right now from the secretary and the chief is, hey, do we need all of these systems, why do we have them?” CIO Leonel Garciga said during a presentation Wednesday at the Potomac Officers Club’s Army Summit. “A lot of it is a process. Lot of it is, ‘we’ve had it for the last two decades, sir.’ Some of it is really old.”

Unveiled at the end of April, the Army Transformation Initiative is a top-down effort to improve how the service operates by shrinking headquarters elements, becoming leaner, slashing programs that aren’t efficient and changing how money is spent.

The goal is to cut obsolete programs and systems that don’t contribute to success on the modern battlefield.

“The Army is trying to change as fast as we are seeing the operational environment change as well as the technological environment change. Army Transformation Initiative is actually our response to that and how can we go about doing that,” Lt. Gen. Karl Gingrich, deputy chief of staff, G-8, said at Wednesday’s summit. “You’re going to start to see what we are trying to do and how we are trying to move faster to respond to that operational environment. No longer can we wait for the next [Program Objective Memorandum], for the next budget cycle. We have to be able to change now and change at the pace that is required of us as a force … It’s also about structure, and what we’re trying to do is eliminate waste and obsolete programs. You’re going to see a lot of different change inside of our equipping programs. You’re going to see a lot of different change inside of our force structure. We’re paying for this, largely, mostly ourselves.”

Garciga noted that for him as CIO, ATI means rethinking the way they deliver capability across the board, but officials are still working through that.

Secretary Dan Driscoll and Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George have both asserted that the Army wants to buy commercial where possible and try to get out of the paradigm of developing long-yielding programs of record — all in an effort to speed capability to field.

“The model is going to change and I think that’s — I keep stressing this idea of our traditional model of full stack, bespoke capabilities, just going to tell you that’s pretty much dead,” Garciga said. “There’s very few areas where it’s like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, we should probably do that. Almost holistically, across the board, as we triage just functions that are happening across the enterprise, more and more, what we’re seeing is, hey, we can just do this here, let’s go get that done. Starting to think about what that model looks like, it’s really, really important.”

Garciga also noted that the undersecretary recently signed a memo directing major Army organizations to submit three human-intensive processes to the CIO to focus on how to either automate them, augment them with artificial intelligence or machine learning, or get rid of them entirely.

“Lots of cuts, dynamic workforce shaping, it’s a little different right now. How do we make up for some of those losses and still provide capability and take this opportunity to actually relook and rethink things that we’re doing in the Army right now to deliver capabilities?” Garciga said. “I think this is really important, long time overdue. It really took the stress on the system to get really serious about, oh my god, we still have to do the mission, how do we really look at doing this more efficiently? Big push, so next 20 days, we’re going to see a lot of churn on that.”

These new initiatives could provide big opportunities for the defense industrial base to support the Army, Garciga said, charging audience members to start thinking about how their organizations can contribute.

Members of Congress, on a bipartisan and bicameral basis, have been frustrated so far with the Army regarding the rollout of the broader transformation initiative. While there has been widespread support for the underlying notion of the effort, service leaders have yet to transmit any documents related to ATI, to include analysis for how the decisions to cut programs were made, or how officials will make funding and program decisions in the future.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense earlier this week that in the next 10 days, lawmakers can expect to see documentation.

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The move is the latest push by the department to tap into capabilities and know-how from Silicon Valley and the commercial sector.

The new corps “brings top tech talent into the Army Reserve to bridge the commercial-military tech gap” and is “designed to fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation,” the Army stated in a press release.

On Friday, the service is set to swear-in Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, OpenAI’s chief product officer Kevin Weil, Palantir’s CTO Shyam Sankar and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab who was previously OpenAI’s chief research officer.

Meta, which owns Facebook, recently announced a new partnership with defense tech company Anduril to develop extended reality (XR) products for soldiers.

OpenAI is the maker of the wildly popular generative AI tool ChatGPT. The Army and the Defense Department writ large are pursuing new genAI tools to boost productivity and efficiency.

Palantir is a major provider of software tools for the DOD — including the Maven Smart System — and is also developing hardware, such as the Army’s AI-enabled TITAN vehicle.

“Det. 201 is an effort to recruit senior tech executives to serve part-time in the Army Reserve as senior advisors. In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems. By bringing private-sector know-how into uniform, Det. 201 is supercharging efforts like the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal,” the service stated in Friday’s press release.

The swearing-in of the four new officers “is just the start of a bigger mission to inspire more tech pros to serve without leaving their careers, showing the next generation how to make a difference in uniform,” per the release.

The Army didn’t provide additional details about how large the detachment will grow to or how fast the service will expand it by bringing in new personnel from the tech sector.

Friday’s announcement comes in the midst of a new Army Transformation Initiative that was launched in recent weeks — which is being spearheaded by Secretary Daniel Driscoll and Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George — that calls for eliminating systems that are deemed obsolete for soldiers on the battlefield in the future and procuring “dual-use” capabilities. Driscoll has advocated for buying more commercial off-the-shelf tech, among other reforms.

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While largely expressing support for the initiative, lawmakers said they need more info.

“Unfortunately, we still have not received any real information on the Army’s budget request, nor have we received any detailed information on the Army’s Transformation Initiative, or ATI, the secretary and the chief announced over a month ago,” Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said. “I believe I speak for most of the members of this committee when I say that we share the goal of developing a more modern, agile and well-equipped Army.”

At the end of April, the service announced what it dubbed Army Transformation Initiative, seeking to shrink its headquarters elements, become leaner, cut programs that aren’t efficient and change how it spends, following a directive from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for sweeping changes to the service.

Rogers told Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll at Wednesday’s HASC hearing that the committee wants to see the service’s “homework” given the significance of what leaders are trying to do.

“We need to see your homework. An overhaul this significant should be based on a thorough assessment of requirements. And it should include a detailed blueprint of the specific changes being proposed and how the Army plans to implement them. We need to see those assessments and blueprints,” he said. “We also need you to provide us a timeline for implementing ATI. These details will help Congress understand, evaluate, and ultimately fund, your transformation efforts.”

That concern was shared by other top members of the committee as well.

“I want to applaud both of you publicly for diving into that very difficult subject. It needs to be done. Now, the chairman is right, the details need to be worked out, but there is no question that the nature of warfare is changing dramatically. How do we adjust our force to meet those challenges?” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the panel’s ranking member, said. “Your efforts in that are broadly supported by this committee. Devil’s in the details, but you’re headed in the right direction and we look forward to working with you to make some of those changes.”

Others expressed dismay regarding how the Army has presented the reform effort and requested more details from leadership.

“Like many of my colleagues, I am frustrated by how the Army has decided to roll out this Army Transformation Initiative. It doesn’t matter which side of the aisle that we’re on here, we all want to make sure that the Army is lethal, it is ready to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow,” Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., said. “However, you chose to give us a plan with few details, with no budgeting and a failure to answer a lot of our questions. Now we’re hearing about how this plan will be implemented from my own constituents, not from leadership. The Army and Congress have always had a better relationship than that.”

When service leaders announced their intentions for reforms, they stated that they were aimed at better posturing the service to deter China in the Pacific theater. But some on the Hill want them to be more forthcoming.

“The Army Transformation Initiative has generated more questions than answers in the department’s attempt to deliver critical warfighting capabilities, optimize our force structure and eliminate waste and obsolete programs,” Rep. Derek Tran, D-Calif., said. “In particular, I am concerned with how the ATI positions the Army to better counter a near-peer adversary like the People’s Republic of China. China’s ability to rapidly field new capabilities can be attributed to its centralized political and military decision-making, state-directed industrial base, incremental fielding of new systems and their blatant theft of foreign intellectual property, all with little to no public oversight.”

When asked for a timeline for details of what the service is proposing, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told the committee that the transformation will be an iterative process and that there won’t be a single date for everything in the initial batch of transformation.

“We will be hopefully doing what the best companies in America do and learning as we go,” Driscoll said, noting some efforts are in progress. He promised to share details as soon as “reasonable drafts” are in place.

He said many of the cuts to obsolete programs will be reflected in the forthcoming fiscal 2026 budget.

“We’re obviously continuing with FY25 [spending] because that’s what we were directed to do with our budget,” George said, adding that they’re canceling Humvees and haven’t asked to purchase new ones.

HASC members said they wanted to ensure that the Army was making transformation choices based on real policy decisions that will help the service counter battlefield threats more effectively rather than being purely rooted in budgetary constraints.

“If budget is driving policy, you’re going to have a problem by this committee. If policy is being driven first and budget is a consequence, then we’re going to be open ears,” Rogers said. “But you can’t just try to make your policy or your construct fit a number that’s arbitrary. We need you to let us know what you need and then let us worry about funding it, because that’s what we’re here for. Just know that there’s other people that see this same way you do, which is why we need a budget so we can talk about these things. But I can’t overstate, we are not going to be hostile to dramatic changes if it’s being driven by the need for change and not just to meet some budget number that somebody’s handed to you.”

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