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 The service is moving to divest of capabilities that are outdated and put more money into other equipment.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 “We made some tough choices to shed outdated systems and programs that no longer meet our demands of the modern battlefield,” including divesting from legacy anti-tank missiles, they noted.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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Gen. Christopher Cavoli, who is dual-hatted as the Eucom chief and Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO, gave lawmakers an update on the war and the current battlefield situation Thursday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“The scale of this conflict is just awe-inspiring. Thousands of tanks destroyed on both sides,” Cavoli said.

At the start of the full-scale war in February 2022, Russia had about 13,000 tanks on active status and in storage, according to Cavoli.

“They’re starting to approach near the end of … the useful tanks in storage. So, depending on how much more they lose, that will really determine how quickly they can regenerate,” he told lawmakers.

“Russian ground forces in Ukraine have lost an estimated 3,000 tanks, 9,000 armored vehicles, 13,000 artillery systems, and over 400 air defense systems in the past year,” Cavoli said in a written statement to the committee.

However, Moscow is on pace to replace those losses, he added, noting that it has expanded its industrial production, opened new manufacturing facilities, and converted commercial production lines for military purposes.

“As a result, the Russian defense industrial base is expected to roll out 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armored vehicles, and 200 Iskander ballistic and cruise missiles this year. (Comparatively, the United States only produces about 135 tanks per year and no longer produces new Bradley Fighting Vehicles.) Additionally, we anticipate Russia to produce 250,000 artillery shells per month, which puts it on track to build a stockpile three times greater than the United States and Europe combined,” Cavoli wrote.

Cavoli did not provide comparative figures for Ukraine’s equipment losses and weapons production.

Moscow’s production capability for some items, such as artillery shells and cruise missiles, has expanded “tremendously,” and it’s building one-way attack drones “in prodigious numbers,” he told senators, noting that Russian ground forces are integrating reconnaissance and kamikaze drones into their offensive operations on the battlefield.

Ukraine has used a variety of weapons — including unmanned aerial systems, artillery and Javelin missiles, among others — to destroy Russian tanks and other equipment.

Cavoli noted that both sides in the conflict are also conducting long-range attacks, with the Russians deploying cruise missiles and glide bombs and the Ukrainians relying mainly on one-way attack drones.

Ukraine is also using “some indigenously produced cruise missile systems — one in particular that I’ve got in mind that we can talk about in closed session,” Cavoli told SASC members.

The U.S. has provided large quantities of UAS — including kamikaze drones such as Switchblades and the Phoenix Ghost family of systems — to Kyiv since the war began to help it counter Russia’s invasion.

However, Ukraine’s defense industry has ramped up and is producing many of its own munitions.

“I would say they’re the world leaders in one-attack drone technology,” Cavoli told lawmakers.

President Donald Trump, noting the heavy losses on both sides of the conflict, has been pressuring Ukraine to reach a peace deal with Russia.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is learning lessons from the war.

Cavoli mentioned the Army’s transforming-in-contact initiative — which is focused on modernizing the force with UAS, counter-UAS and electronic warfare — as an example of how the Defense Department is shaking things up based on what officials are seeing in Europe.

“Our use of drones has changed deeply across the joint force. Before this conflict, in the U.S. Army, for example, we had very few [UAS], but large drones associated with large units. Now we’re proliferating smaller drones to smaller units and having a larger number of drones in lower and lower hands. Fundamental change in the way where we’re doing business,” he said.

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The company on Thursday will be the last of three contractors tapped for the initiative to officially unveil their offering.

In April, the Defense Department announced that Anduril, AeroVironment and Teledyne FLIR won contracts to provide kamikaze drones for the program, as the Marines move to give dismounted troops enhanced strike capabilities under a modernization plan known as Force Design. The contracts included $8.9 million for AeroVironment, $12.1 million for Teledyne FLIR and $6.5 million for Anduril, but the deals could have a total combined value of up to $249 million, according to the Pentagon. Work is expected to be completed by April 2026.

AeroVironment announced in April that the next-generation Block 20 variant of its Switchblade 300 system had been selected for the program. In May, Teledyne FLIR introduced its new Rogue 1 platform, which the company said it was offering for the OPF-L effort. But Anduril kept its product under wraps until this week.

The Bolt is a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drone that doesn’t require a runway. It’s also “man-packable,” according to Anduril, with a gross weight of about 15 pounds.

“There’s a sort of basic backpack form factor that that this packs down into, and you can throw it on your back and bring it with you. So in that respect, yeah, we really mean sort of the ability of a single operator to carry it, set it up, launch it, use it,” Chris Brose, the company’s chief strategy officer, told DefenseScoop during a call with reporters to discuss the system ahead of the official unveiling.

The company is touting the technology as an “autonomous” air vehicle, equipped with an AI software package called Lattice, that doesn’t require nearly as much operator training and engagement as some of the first-person-view drones that have been widely employed in places like Ukraine.

The system offers autonomous waypoint navigation, “target-agnostic object tracking, customizable standoff distances and engagement modalities,” according to the firm.

Troops can “launch a Bolt and send it out into a certain area, you know, kind of draw a bounding box on a map and basically put it in a loiter to do surveillance or to be on call in the event that another sensor detects a threat out in that environment,” Brose told DefenseScoop.

“The system has … the onboard intelligence to be able to discern basic, you know, kind of battlefield objects, people, vehicles, things of that sort. But then if there is something that’s unknown to the [AI and computer vision] system, you know, the ability to surface … what could be something that’s anomalous or something that’s not understood. Or just give the operator the ability to, you know, kind of extend their understanding of the battlespace and if there is something that’s unknown, to basically flag it, I mean, to put a bounding box around it and say, ‘Hey, I want you to kind of further surveil this’ or ‘I want you to stick with this to help me gather more information about what that might be,’” Brose said. “And if they make the decision that they want to do something about it, you know, they can also then direct the system to attack in different ways … Whether, you know, it’s a particular kind of angle of ingress or angle of attack, you know, whether it’s top down, you know, these are all things that the user can select … with like a click of the button, so to speak. And then the system does the rest and sort of takes that direction or intent and executes the command.”

Algorithms onboard the kamikaze drone can maintain terminal guidance and enable the weapon to hit its target even if connectivity with the human operator is lost during an attack, according to company officials, who also said the unmanned aerial system is compatible with a variety of warheads that can be swapped out.

The platform has more than 40 minutes of endurance, 20 kilometers of range, and can strike light vehicles, dismounted personnel, trenches or other targets, according to Anduril, with a munition payload capacity of up to 3 pounds. The company did not disclose other specifications such as its top speed.

Deliveries of Bolt to the Marine Corps are slated to take place over the next six months. Brose declined to disclose how many systems will be provided for the upcoming test-and-evaluation efforts, which are expected to inform government acquisition and fielding plans in fiscal 2025 and beyond.

“I believe they’re in a phase of evaluating, you know, a handful of capabilities, Bolt being one of them. And then, you know, a larger competition will flow from there,” he said.

Meanwhile, Anduril is eyeing another branch of the U.S. military as a potential future customer for the platform.

“The Army also has requirements for smaller loitering munitions, smaller … man-packable precision fires capabilities. So, you know, I think as the Army begins to figure out, you know, how it wants to structure programs, you know, kind of what acquisition strategies it wants to put in place, funding profiles, etc., … we’re excited to be able to bring Bolt to bear for them in that regard,” Brose said. “We think, you know, there’s a lot about the system that differentiates it in terms of its autonomy, in terms of its onboard artificial intelligence, … speed, warhead, you know things of that sort. So you know, really excited to be able to potentially do more with the Army in that respect.”

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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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Ground-launched loitering munitions have proliferated across battlefields in recent years including in Ukraine and the Middle East. Now, SOCOM is looking for similar weapons that can be dropped from a variety of aircraft in its inventory, including gunships, helicopters and large unmanned aerial systems.

The command began accepting capability submissions this week, and a downselect is slated for March. Those that make the cut will receive an invitation to attend the assessment event in April at the SOFWERX facility in Tampa, Florida, where they can pitch and showcase their tech, according to a special notice posted on Sam.gov.

Unlike traditional munitions, kamikaze drones 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.

SOCOM’s stand-off precision guided munitions program office “currently supports Special Operations Forces (SOF) aircrews with short range munitions that are employed directly to known targets, visually identified by the shooter aircraft before launch, and use existing precision terminal guidance solutions such as Global Positioning System (GPS). USSOCOM has determined these traditional methods and sensors are not optimal for operations in a time compressed and highly contested environment and is looking for [air-launched loitering munitions] with improved sensor technologies to decrease the engagement time from minutes to seconds, improve targeting solutions, and increase the survivability of SOF,” according to the special notice.

The command “intends to survey industry for mature technology with minimum development required to support rapid fielding of this capability,” the notice states. “If the USSOCOM evaluation panel favorably evaluates a solution brief, negotiations for [the next phase] may immediately begin.”

The next phase will include flight demonstrations anticipated for later this year. Those events will give the command a pathway to downselect systems for full integration, operational testing, production and fielding, according to officials.

The desired endurance for the loitering munitions is 45 minutes for weapons that can be deployed from a common launch tube, and 120 minutes for those that use other launch methods. The desired range for those is 20 nautical miles and 60 nautical miles, respectively, according to assessment criteria provided by SOFWERX.

Other characteristics of interest include minimum and maximum airspeed and altitude; payload capacity; sensors and seekers; command and control; counter-detection; warhead and fusing; aircraft integration standards; and employment from a variety special ops aircraft.

The command is eyeing loitering munitions that could be deployed from AC-130J Ghostrider gunships, MQ-9 Reaper drones, MH-60 helicopters and other platforms.

Submissions from those who wish to participate in the assessment event are due March 15.

SOCOM isn’t the only Defense Department component on the hunt for air-launched drones with loitering capabilities.

For example, the Army has a Launched Effects program. In December, the service conducted a successful flight test involving the launch of an Anduril-made Altius 700 unmanned aerial system from a Black Hawk helicopter, according to a release.

Anduril has developed a loitering munition variant of the system known as the Altius 700M.

The Army planned to conduct a flight test of a fully integrated launched-effects prototype early this year. The service is aiming for a final operational demonstration by the end of fiscal 2024 and a rapid fielding decision in 2025, per the release.

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Sources who spoke to DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity last week said Switchblade 600 kamikaze drones made Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks’ cut for the loitering munitions capability set, via the Army’s Tactical Aviation and Ground Munitions (TAGM) program.

Switchblade 600s, built by AeroVironment, are designed to destroy armored vehicles and other targets. They have a 24-mile range, 40 minutes of loitering endurance and the ability to fly at speeds of up to 115 miles per hour, according to a product description on the manufacturer’s website.

The Pentagon submitted a spending plan and reprogramming requests to Congress on Jan. 31 for the Replicator initiative, which would allow the Department of Defense to ramp up and accelerate production for selected capabilities.

The DOD’s stated goal for the first increment is to counter China’s military buildup by fielding thousands of attritable “autonomous” systems in multiple domains by August 2025.

“The Army’s involved [in Replicator]. I am not in a position to be able to talk in detail. A lot of the details are classified. I think the reports though about Congress getting a reprogramming [request] — that’s true. So, Congress will need to support this effort. And hopefully we’ll make our case and they will be supportive. I think the Army put forward several good ideas, but so did the other services … And the department has been choosing among them,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush said during a roundtable Monday hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“I’m always excited about anything we can do to go faster on new technology. And if Congress supports it, I think this could become a good thing that happens on a cycle, where it gives us … a way to kind of between appropriations bills, move faster on critical new tech,” he said.

During an interview with DefenseScoop in December, Bush acknowledged that the Army proposed unmanned aerial systems for the initiative. However, he declined to identify the drones.

“I can’t [say which group of UAS they are part of], OK. But [they’re] not super small. So, I think, more focused on things with a bit longer range, with a bit more punch than like, you know, a very small quadcopter. So, bigger than that,” Bush told DefenseScoop.

The Pentagon has been tight-lipped about which capability sets and specific systems have been selected for Replicator. Hicks has noted her desire to keep certain details out of the public eye in order to avoid tipping off China or other potential adversaries.

“The deputy secretary selected capability areas in December. The military departments then identified specific systems and associated acquisition strategies to meet those capability needs. The department recently notified our congressional committees of jurisdiction of those system requests, on plan with Replicator’s established timeline. We have no further details to provide on individual systems at this time,” Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon told DefenseScoop last week after being asked to confirm the Switchblade 600 selection.

Pahon also declined to provide specifics regarding how much funding might be reprogrammed through Replicator for loitering munitions this year.

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The DOD’s stated goal of Replicator is to counter China’s massive, ongoing military buildup by fielding thousands of attritable autonomous systems in multiple domains by August 2025. Replicator selections for to-be-fielded products will be made across roughly 10 technology portfolios or sets and announced in various tranches, with the first encompassing more “mature” capabilities that have already been proven within U.S. military components.

The Pentagon recently revealed that a small number of capabilities were chosen last month to be prioritized for the initial Replicator tranche — but officials would not identify them. In December, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush had previously suggested to DefenseScoop that the service nominated several drone systems for the initiative.

Sources who spoke to DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity this week said AeroVironment-built Switchblade 600 attack drones made Hicks’ cut for the Replicator loitering munitions capability set, via the Army’s Tactical Aviation and Ground Munitions (TAGM) program.

With a 24-mile range, 40 minutes of loitering endurance and the ability to fly at speeds of up to 115 miles per hour, Switchblade 600s are built to destroy armored vehicles and other targets in multi-domain military operations.

Since Replicator was unveiled by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks in August, she and officials across the Defense Department have been tight-lipped about certain aspects of how the initiative is really coming together, pointing to a need for secrecy so as not to tip off adversaries.

“The deputy secretary selected capability areas in December. The military departments then identified specific systems and associated acquisition strategies to meet those capability needs. The department recently notified our congressional committees of jurisdiction of those system requests, on plan with Replicator’s established timeline. We have no further details to provide on individual systems at this time,” Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon told DefenseScoop on Friday after being asked to confirm the Switchblade 600 selection.

Pahon also declined to provide specifics regarding how many millions in funding might be reprogrammed through Replicator for the loitering munitions in 2024.

“We submitted a spend plan and reprogramming requests to Congress [on Jan. 31]. We hope they will act quickly, which will allow us to ramp up and accelerate production on Replicator capabilities. We aren’t able to provide specifics on the reprogramming request at this time,” he said.

Notably, loitering munitions are just one of multiple different capability areas that DOD seeks to accelerate with Replicator.

During a press briefing with reporters in November, Hicks said “the idea that this is all about sort of kinetic swarms I think is very misleading.”

“I don’t think ‘kamikaze drone’ is the right way to think about it. You need to think, again, well beyond the kinetic side of this into the ability to deliver logistics, command and control, ISR, if you will, and again, multiple domains,” she said.

In response to DefenseScoop’s questions, Pahon would not detail the other Replicator capability sets that Hicks’ team approved. He also hinted that more selections and considerations for loitering munitions may be made in the near term.

“The department is constantly seeking opportunities to bring in new vendors across a multitude of capability areas. This is reflective of [the Defense Innovation Unit’s] core mission to engage emerging technology providers through the commercial solutions offering process. We have no further details to provide on individual systems at this time,” he said.

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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 Pentagon is pursuing a variety of uncrewed maritime systems as well as loitering munitions. But Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, deputy commandant for combat development and integration and commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command, sees the potential to marry those types of technologies.

The Marines are already pursuing so-called one-way attack drones — also known as loitering munitions, kamikaze drones, or suicide drones because they’re designed to destroy their targets by crashing into them — for dismounted infantry as part of the service’s Force Design 2030 modernization effort.

“We’re focused very heavily now on the organic precision fires, loitering munitions. There’s a lot of areas there that I think we can accelerate because industry is clearly cutting the path for us,” Heckl said Wednesday at the annual Defense News Conference.

There’s also “the idea of loitering munitions coming off of unmanned surface vessels, loitering munitions coming out of unmanned underwater vessels, right. You can let your imagination run wild,” he added.

The U.S. military hasn’t yet tested out the concept of launching kamikaze drones from USVs or UUVs, he told DefenseScoop during a meeting with reporters on the sidelines of the conference. But doing so is part of the plan, he suggested.

“We’re not experimenting, but we will. I mean, imagine maybe it’s even a semi-submersible so if you don’t have to go deep in the water, it’s less expensive, it’s just not as complicated. But imagine a fully autonomous UUV that can go out, get to within X range of an area, surface and launch thousands of loitering munitions that are fully autonomous, and then slip back below the surface and return to an [expeditionary advanced base] to be refilled. That’s where we’re going,” he said.

DefenseScoop asked Heckl if a system like the Orca extra-large UUV could potentially perform that type of role.

“Could be. We’re certainly looking at Orca, yep. But … I try to drive cost out everything, right, because we have to be good stewards of the American taxpayers’ money. So, I don’t need a … submersible that goes down to like, you know, nuclear submarine depth. I just don’t need it. You know it’s very expensive, so that’s why the semi-submersible thing is really attractive,” he said.

Uncrewed vessels could also be used to launch torpedoes to kill enemy ships, according to Heckl.

However, there will be technical issues associated with employing weapons from USVs and UUVs, he noted. For example, loitering munitions will need to be protected from harsh maritime environments until they’re ready to be launched.

“Now you’re talking about things that have to move and open up. [And there’s] always potential for failure,” he said. “That’s why I think keeping things as simple as you can [is advantageous]. The more simple the machine, the less likely it is to break.”

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