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 The service is moving to divest of capabilities that are outdated and put more money into other equipment.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 “We made some tough choices to shed outdated systems and programs that no longer meet our demands of the modern battlefield,” including divesting from legacy anti-tank missiles, they noted.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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The extra money for the loitering munitions — also known as kamikaze drones or one-way attack drones — is coming from the national security supplemental passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden last week, as well as the Defense Department’s Replicator initiative, according to Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush.

“That was part of our request was additional funding for those munitions as part of answering a European Command [joint urgent operational need]. That’s why it was in there. So yeah, they fully funded that” in the supplemental, Bush told DefenseScoop during a roundtable with reporters at the Pentagon. “That, plus the funding we had ourselves, plus help from our friends at OSD in Replicator … moves us way further down the line to just getting into larger-scale production than we would have been otherwise this year,” he said.

DefenseScoop asked Bush about the total amount of extra funding that the Army is expecting for LASSO.

“I have to be careful because on Replicator, I can’t give specific numbers. But … we’re north of $100 million if you add it all together. And we had done some ourselves. So we had done about 20 [million dollars] of our own internal reprogramming. And then we got Replicator. And we got the 72 [million]. So we’re well north of 100 [million] now when you put it all together. But I don’t want to get ahead of any Replicator announcements on specifics,” he said.

The Army chose AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600 for the first increment of LASSO. However, it doesn’t intend for it to be a winner-take-all program for industry, Bush has said.

Earlier this year, DefenseScoop broke the news that the Switchblade 600 was picked for the first tranche of the secretive Replicator effort. Other types of unmanned systems for the Navy and counter-drone systems for the Marine Corps, were also selected by Defense Department leaders for the first tranche, DefenseScoop recently reported. The Pentagon has been seeking funding approvals from lawmakers to support the initiative, including through reprogramming.

With regard to reprogrammed funding related to Replicator and LASSO, “I can’t say it’s in our bank account yet, but we believe it’s coming. And then we get our supplemental funding. So you know, we’re piecing together a way to go faster than we would have been otherwise, which is great for the Army,” Bush told DefenseScoop at the roundtable.

Unlike traditional munitions, loitering munitions can fly around until they identify a target. And unlike armed unmanned aerial systems that launch missiles, kamikaze drones destroy their target by crashing into it. They can be armed with a warhead to enhance their potency.

LASSO weapons are part of the Army’s vision for a family of low-altitude UAS that are “semi-autonomous (human-in-the-loop) unmanned aerial systems that improves the Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) lethality in terms of stand-off and destruction against dismounted formations, armored vehicles, and tanks,” according to budget justification documents.

“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,” officials wrote. “The LASSO base capability will be optimized to defeat tanks rapidly and precisely for IBCTs. Follow on increments will support future capabilities for company and below echelons. Future increments will focus on additional range increases, enhanced lethality, and advanced payload options (personnel, hard sites, etc.).”

Looking ahead as part of its regular budget submission, the service is asking lawmakers for an additional $120.6 million to procure LASSO production systems in fiscal 2025, including 54 fire control units, 434 all-up rounds and 144 reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition components.

Meanwhile, the Army has proposed three additional systems for the next tranche of Replicator, Bush told DefenseScoop last month, although he didn’t disclose what they were.

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LASSO is a new-start program for fiscal 2025 that’s part of the service’s vision for a family of low-altitude UAS that are “semi-autonomous (human-in-the-loop) unmanned aerial systems that improves the Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) lethality in terms of stand-off and destruction against dismounted formations, armored vehicles, and tanks,” according to newly released budget justification documents.

The goal of the project is to make infantry brigades as lethal as armored brigades, according to the Army.

Unlike traditional munitions, loitering munitions — also known as kamikaze drones or one-way attack UAS — can fly around until they identify a target. And unlike armed unmanned aerial systems that launch missiles, kamikaze drones destroy their target by crashing into it. They can be armed with a warhead to enhance their potency.

The Army describes the LASSO capability as a lightweight, man-portable weapon that can operate day or night. It includes all-up rounds with a launch-and-delivery system and payload.

It also comes with a fire control system that consists of the fire control unit, ground data link and terminal, and other ancillary equipment.

“LASSO can range 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 … from enemy fires, significantly reducing risk to the Soldier,” according to budget justification documents.

“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,” officials wrote. “The LASSO base capability will be optimized to defeat tanks rapidly and precisely for IBCTs. Follow on increments will support future capabilities for company and below echelons. Future increments will focus on additional range increases, enhanced lethality, and advanced payload options (personnel, hard sites, etc.).”

The $121 million that the Army is requesting would support the procurement of 54 fire control units, 434 all-up rounds and 144 reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition components.

The Army has picked AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600 for the first increment of LASSO. However, the service doesn’t intend for it to be a winner-take-all program for industry.

“We’re gonna have multiple variants and we’re gonna have competition. So, to meet the urgent need, we’ve gone sole source to a limited number of SB 600, which is a very good system. But there’s a lot of companies in this space with a lot of good tech. So, we want to have really continuous competition because different companies have things that fit different parts of the mission space better … This is one where I think it’d be unwise to pick one at the start and just say, ‘Nope, this is it. Nobody else gets anything. This one company is it.’ There’s too much competition in this space. We want to leverage that innovation,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush said in an interview with DefenseScoop at the Reagan National Defense Forum in December.

For loitering munitions with modular payloads, the Army would like to retain some flexibility on what those payloads are, based on the service’s needs, Bush said last week during a meeting with reporters to preview the fiscal 2025 budget request.

“We might be heavy one year in [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and heavy the next year on strike,” he said.

The newly released budget justification documents did not include any additional funding for LASSO beyond fiscal 2025.

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For LASSO, the Army wants man-portable, tube-launched, unmanned aerial systems that have an electro-optical/infrared sensor, precision flight control, and the ability to fly, track and engage non-line-of-sight targets and armored vehicles with precision.

AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600 loitering munition was recently sole-sourced for the initial variant through an urgent-need acquisition pathway. The drone is designed to destroy its targets by crashing into them with a warhead.

However, the Pentagon is still looking for more LASSO funding from Congress, which hasn’t passed a full-year defense appropriations bill for fiscal 2024 or approved the national security supplemental funding request from the Biden administration. Federal agencies are currently operating under a continuing resolution.

“The second step with all such things is finding the money,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush said in an interview with DefenseScoop at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “You can imagine under a CR, it’s harder to move things around. But Congress did approve a reprogramming to get us started — it was small, but like $20 million to get us started. We’re working on getting that on contract now. And production of increment 1, you know, is going to be Switchblade 600. They can produce those things pretty fast. So I imagine, you know, we’re … hopefully just like a year away, maybe, from having initial stuff fielded. We can go faster, though. The supplemental request actually has $72 million in it for that initiative. So that would get us up to, you know, $92 million, and now we’re talking several thousand systems. So if we get supplemental, then we’ll really get moving on that.”

Last week, Bush visited AeroVironment’s facility in Simi Valley, California.

“It was a very, very good visit. Really interesting … The Army is already buying [Switchblades], but it was good to go see the manufacturing line and actually see the weapons or how they’re put together. And they’ve got certainly potential to scale up. And they’ve got a lot of other customers,” he noted.

However, going forward, the Army doesn’t intend for LASSO to be a winner-take-all program for industry.

“We’re gonna have multiple variants and we’re gonna have competition. So, to meet the urgent need, we’ve gone sole source to a limited number of SB 600, which is a very good system. But there’s a lot of companies in this space with a lot of good tech. So, we want to have really continuous competition because different companies have things that fit different parts of the mission space better … This is one where I think it’d be unwise to pick one at the start and just say, ‘Nope, this is it. Nobody else gets anything. This one company is it.’ There’s too much competition in this space. We want to leverage that innovation,” Bush told DefenseScoop.

He noted that he visited several drone vendors during his trip to California last week.

“You’ve heard the chief of staff — Gen. [Randy] George talked about the need to go faster and broader here in UAS. So kind of just getting an idea of the landscape of who can really scale up quickly, who’s got the base, you know, the capacity,” Bush said.

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The so-called Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance initiative is being led by project manager soldier warrior and product manager soldier precision targeting devices under Program Executive Office Soldier.

“LASSO is a man-portable, tube-launched, lethal payload munition, unmanned aerial system. It includes electrical optical /infrared sensor, precision flight control, and the ability to fly, track and engage non-line-of-sight targets and armored vehicles with precision lethal fires,” according to an Army release issued last month.

The service is currently using an “urgent capability acquisition pathway” with the aim of quickly delivering the new capability to infantry brigade combat teams. But the Maneuver Capability Development and Integration Directorate is also working on an “enduring requirement” to support a future program of record, per the release.

The effort comes as Pentagon officials are watching what’s happening in the Ukraine-Russia war, where both sides are widely deploying unmanned aerial systems. The Biden administration has committed large quantities of kamikaze drones — also known as one-way attack UAS or loitering munitions — and other systems to Ukraine as part of security assistance packages to help Kyiv in its fight against Russian invaders.

According to a Defense Department fact sheet, the systems include Switchblade and Phoenix Ghost kamikaze drones, as well as the CyberLux K8, Altius-600, Jump-20, Puma, Scan Eagle, Penguin, and “Hornet” UAS (which is reportedly the Black Hornet nano drone).

“On the UAS side, I think in some cases, yes, what we’re sending to Ukraine are also going to fit into our future [acquisition] plans. So, we are initiating a new program — the acronym is LASSO — to provide infantry units primarily with a loitering attack munition. We are though going to take a competitive approach. So, I think early increments of that might be some of the things that have been sent to Ukraine. But there’s a lot of companies in this space, so we’re going to leverage competition as well as maybe having more than one version so we can have more production capacity,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush told DefenseScoop and other reporters during a media roundtable at the Pentagon on Monday.

“So yes, there is probably some overlap between what we’re sending [to Ukraine] and what we’re going to buy ourselves,” he added.

The service is also keen on acquiring a variety of counter-drone technologies to defend against adversaries’ systems.

“On counter-UAS, I think we’ve been buying systems quite extensively, both for fixed site and mobile sets. A lot of that equipment is — we’re confident in it because of how it’s done in the Middle East. Frankly, that’s where they’ve seen the most action. Some of that … is going to Ukraine. Also, though, we’ve seen some very innovative work from the defense industry on some very low cost, low-tech approaches to counter-UAS that have gone to Ukraine that are quite promising,” Bush said.

The Army and the Pentagon’s Joint Counter-small UAS Office (JCO) are spearheading efforts to tackle the challenge posed by drones on the smaller end of the spectrum, working with industry to experiment with systems and helping develop requirements.

They are “doing a good job of seeing the landscape. And I think all that will inform, yes, a broad push to invest more in both unmanned aircraft systems, but also counter-UAS. The war [in Ukraine] is showing how much they’re here and are affecting the war every day. I think you can see it in videos every day. So  … we have to keep up,” Bush said.

Not all counter-drone tech needs to be a high-end capability, he noted.

“Ukraine has been able to combine in some cases just machine guns — high caliber, you know, large caliber machine guns — with some night vision equipment into something pretty effective when it’s cued by a sensor,” he said.

However, to take out some of the larger, more sophisticated drones in the Group 3 category, such as the type of Iranian-made kamikaze drones that the Russians are using in Ukraine, more expensive missile systems are needed, according to Bush.

The Army is also interested in electronic warfare tools to defeat enemy UAS, particularly smaller drones.

“Electronic warfare is proving highly effective in Ukraine against those on both sides. So, we should learn from that,” Bush said.

The push for new EW capabilities is part of a broader modernization effort across the Army.

“With all of our weapons, we are constantly having to update them to account for … in this case, enemy jamming capability. And that’s ongoing and we are taking lessons from what we are seeing in Ukraine. More to the point, what we’re seeing reinforces the Army’s commitment. We’ve got the programs underway,” he noted, including the TLS-BCT and TLS-EAB.

The service is trying to revamp its EW arsenal after divesting much of its equipment after the Cold War ended.

The Army is “fundamentally reinvesting in rebuilding our tactical electronic warfare capability after that largely left the force over the last 20 years. So, it adds to the urgency of those programs. They’re on track, I feel good about them. But certainly, what we’re seeing in Ukraine is adding to that urgency to get those going,” Bush said.

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