The House Armed Services Committee’s draft of the next defense authorization bill supports hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding for Army procurement of counter-drone capabilities.
HASC also included a $4.5 million add in its chairman’s mark of the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act for continued development work with Anduril Industries’ Roadrunner-Munition autonomous air vehicle, which was also included in the Army’s unfunded priorities list.
The Army had included counter-drone items at the top of its $2.2 billion unfunded priorities list, specifically seeking $350.3 million for projects related to dealing with UAS threats (Defense Daily, March 25).
Aligning with the Army’s requests in its unfunded priorities list, HASC authorizers supported an additional $184.8 million for missiles and $165.5 million for force protection capabilities related to counter-small drone procurement.
HASC authorizes also support an additional $12.5 million aligned with the Army unfunded request for additional procurement of RTX’s [RTX] Coyote interceptors.
In total, HASC’s draft version of the NDAA authorizes $760.3 million for Army procurement related to counter-drone items.
HASC’s draft NDAA also authorizes $64.5 million for c-sUAS advanced development, which includes a $4.5 million add to support the third top priority on the Army’s unfunded list, which was further work with Anduril’s Roadrunner-M capability.
Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, told reporters in late March that Anduril’s Roadrunner AAV could be an “attractive system” for the service, to include as a priority capability for U.S. Central Command (Defense Daily, March 29).
Bush described Roadrunner as a “capable missile,” adding that “some elements of the Army have been working on that system for a while.”
Anduril first detailed the jet-powered, highly-maneuverable and recoverable Roadrunner AAV last fall, with company founder Palmer Luckey noting the Roadrunner-M version is able to destroy full-size aircraft (Defense Daily, Dec. 1 2023).
Luckey said at the time that Anduril has an unnamed U.S. customer for Roadrunner-M, adding that the capability has been “operationally assessed” and will begin low-rate initial production shortly for the customer with the expectation to scale to thousands of units.
HASC’s draft NDAA also includes a proposal for the Army to establish a new Drone Corps, which would include a focus on c-UAS program and activities (Defense Daily, May 13).
The full committee is set to mark up its $883 billion FY ’25 NDAA on May 22, while congressional appropriators will ultimately set final funding levels (Defense Daily, May 13).