Army leans on counter-drone marketplace to help address ‘high security concerns’ for upcoming stateside events
The Army’s top civilian leader told lawmakers the service is leaning on its new counter-drone marketplace to bolster local security at upcoming high-profile events, ones that experts and officials have warned are at risk of unmanned aerial system threats.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon debuted an initial launch of its “Counter-UAS Marketplace,” which officials have touted as an “Amazon-like” platform with a catalogue of anti-drone parts and systems for government personnel to buy.
The Pentagon’s counter-drone entity, Joint Interagency Task Force 401, said this week that $13 million-worth of tech — such as low-collateral systems, sensors, radars and electronic warfare platforms — has been purchased from the site since its launch.
During a House Defense Appropriations subcommittee hearing Thursday, the Army’s top official said non-federal agencies can also buy items from the marketplace.
“State and local and federal law enforcement officers across the country can purchase from this site. We’ve already had purchases,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said when asked about the service’s role in sharing counter-drone capabilities for security at events in the United States.
He said Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall has hosted 350 state and local police departments, though he didn’t specify when, and that the Army is “syncing them in” to JIATF-401’s counter-drone efforts.
While briefly mentioned at Thursday’s budget hearing, Driscoll’s comments about the marketplace and its role in combatting what one lawmaker described as “high security concerns” at major events, highlights long-brewing alarm over stateside drone defense.
Experts have told DefenseScoop that the threats drones present to domestic infrastructure and civilians is ubiquitous given their low cost, easy access and hard-to-detect nature. FIFA World Cup events and America 250 celebrations this summer as well as the 2028 Summer Olympics in California will bring heightened drone security concerns.
“It used to be that we just did the Super Bowl once a year with that kind of cap,” Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a recent interview with DefenseScoop. “But we need lots of Super Bowl-style bubbles over lots of things all year round.”
“Now that does not mean a perfect astrodome over the entire United States and every blade of grass,” he added. “But what it does mean is you need a ton of sensing — ubiquitous sensing — and then a number of relatively robust … air defense capabilities that can be moved around.”
Evidence of such concerns has been playing out for years in the U.S., with hundreds of drone sightings in 2024 over military installations, at the southern border and most recently at Barksdale Air Force base last month where “several unauthorized” UAS entered airspace resulting in a brief shelter-in-place order.
JIATF-401 recently announced it committed $100 million for the FIFA World Cup security, “focusing on mobile counter-drone technologies to protect stadiums and fan zones in 11 cities across nine states.”
Experts and officials often cite Operation Spiderweb — a covert Ukrainian attack last year that targeted static aircraft deep inside Russian territory using more than 100 small drones launched from trucks in the area — as a wake-up call for American stateside protection.
JIATF-401 did not disclose which agencies made the $13 million in purchases, but that counter-UAS capabilities went to the military’s southern border task force, U.S. Central Command — which is overseeing the war in Iran, currently in a brittle ceasefire — and “individual services with homeland defense missions,” according to a press release.
“The marketplace is a critical step forward in our whole-of-government approach to countering the threat of unmanned systems,” Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, JIATF-401 director, said in the release. “This platform is not only revolutionizing the entire procurement process, but also empowering users with the information and tools needed to safeguard our service members and citizens, while providing timely, cost-effective solutions to our warfighters.”
The task force said the marketplace includes a dozen counter-UAS systems and is expanding inventory. The catalog, which initially held more than 1,600 items, also includes repair parts. The marketplace is meant to speed the acquisition process and avoid lengthy lead times.
“Very crucially, everyone on the site is basically agreeing to try to use the same sight picture to monitor the drones,” Driscoll said of marketplace users. “One of the problems is they cross so many jurisdictions, you need to be able to have everybody see the same thing and react.”
It was not immediately clear how the C-UAS marketplace supported cross-jurisdiction drone monitoring.
DefenseScoop previously reported that JIATF-401 had “committed” hundreds of millions of dollars worth of drone technology for the Iran war, an undisclosed portion of which had already put equipment in the hands of service members.
The military has scrambled to meet counter-UAS needs in the conflict, which brought to light the stark reality of having to intercept cheap, mass-producible and deadly drones with often expensive countermeasures. Defense experts recently told the publication that investment into anti-drone technology has been long overdue.
During Thursday’s hearing, Driscoll said the Army bought 13,000 Merops interceptors in the first days of the conflict at roughly $15,000 per unit, which he described as a boon to quelling Iranian-made Shahed drones that can cost as much as three times more, depending on the estimate.
He said part of the reason the Army was able to make that purchase was because of acquisition streamlining from months before.
“Which is amazing because that puts us on the right end of the cost curve,” he said, noting that the Army expects the Merops cost to drop as it scales. “We will make that trade all day long.”
