The Pentagon is scrapping its old playbook for defending against small drones, moving beyond years of evaluations and studies toward a model that comes with new money and authority geared to field capability faster, according to a Thursday memo from the defense secretary.
The directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the formation of the Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401) to “better align authorities and resources to rapidly deliver [joint counter-small unmanned aircraft system] capabilities to America’s warfighters, defeat adversary threats and promote sovereignty over national airspace,” the memo states.
Hegseth also directed the Army secretary to disestablish the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, or JCO, which was created in 2019 and led by the Army. It will cease to exist once JTIAF 401 is established, the memo notes.
The unit that blends operational, acquisition and interagency roles under a single command will be empowered with procurement authority, flexible funding and streamlined personnel authorities, operating under the oversight of the deputy secretary of defense.
The move comes as U.S. forces in the Middle East and Eastern Europe face increasingly sophisticated drone swarms from state and non-state actors. Cheap, disposable quadcopters and fixed-wing models have been used to knock out armored vehicles, overwhelm air defense and harass bases at a fraction of the cost of defending against them.
Ukraine’s daring drone attacks against Russian warplanes on Russian soil in Operation Spiderweb earlier this summer served as a wake-up call in modern warfighting.
The JCO made some headway by narrowing the Pentagon’s crowded field of more than three dozen drone defense prototypes to a handful of approved systems, running joint demonstrations at Yuma Proving Ground— which helped several companies gain traction in the military — and establishing common training and testing protocols.
But critics say the office lacked the teeth to buy and deploy gear quickly and was hamstrung by the Pentagon’s budget cycle.
The new task force aims to fix that. JIATF 401 will be able to direct procurement decisions, allocate up to $50 million per initiative and hire outside the normal federal process to pull in technical experts.
It will also consolidate work on drone forensics, exploitation and replication programs and tie into the Defense Innovation Unit’s Replicator 2 initiative on mass-produced autonomous systems, according to the directive.
Additionally, the task force will have 30 days after initiation to make recommendations on establishing a dedicated C-sUAS test and training range.
The reorganization is designed to compress timelines from years to months.
“We’re moving fast — cutting through bureaucracy, consolidating resources, and empowering this task force with the utmost authority to outpace our adversaries,” Hegseth said in a statement.
The new task force could help reshape a growing market projected to reach tens of billions of dollars over the next decade. Companies that won spots in JCO-sponsored demos, from directed-energy and high-power microwave startups to electronic-warfare specialists, will now face a more centralized buyer with discretionary funding that could keep competition high and fast-paced.
The task force will undergo a formal review after 36 months, giving Congress and the Pentagon a chance to assess whether the new organization delivers.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.