JIATF-401 Accelerates Kinetic Drone Defeat

By Lt. Col. Adam ScherSeptember 29, 2026

Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401), in partnership with the U.S. Army’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive Fires (PAE Fires), completed a counter-unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) shoot-off at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, from Aug. 17–28. The event evaluated multiple defeat systems against Group 3 UAS threats to identify mature, ready-now capabilities that can rapidly transition from testing to procurement and fielding in support of urgent operational requirements.

The demonstration used the common criteria for counter-UAS characterization to assess participating systems against operationally relevant threats and generate comparable performance data to inform acquisition decisions. Based on performance against established evaluation criteria, JIATF-401 awarded a contract for Lockheed Martin’s Grizzly system.

“This is exactly how JIATF-401 is designed to operate: identify an urgent warfighter need, test available solutions against a common standard, make a data-driven decision, and move immediately toward delivering the capability,” said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of JIATF-401. “When a system demonstrates that it can meet the requirement, we have to move with urgency to put that capability in the hands of our warfighters.”

JIATF-401 continues to use common test standards and competitive evaluations to identify effective, ready-now counter-UAS capabilities and rapidly transition successful systems from field testing to being deployed in operational environments.