Switchblade drone maker wins huge Army counter-drone contract

The U.S. Army just handed one drone maker a $500 million bet that cheap enemy drones are about to become the biggest threat American soldiers face on the battlefield.

AeroVironment (AV), the defense company best known for building the backpack-launched Switchblade attack drone and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, though the Army’s award notice lists the company’s Simi Valley, California address, won a $500 million firm-fixed-price contract from the Army on July 1 to supply commercial counter-drone systems, meaning off-the-shelf technology designed to detect, track, and shoot down enemy unmanned aircraft before they can strike. A firm-fixed-price contract locks in a set price for whatever the Army orders under the deal, shifting the risk of cost overruns onto AeroVironment rather than the taxpayer, and it stands in contrast to the cost-reimbursement contracts that let a contractor bill for expenses as they add up.

Army Contracting Command at Detroit Arsenal in Michigan, the office that manages a large share of the Army’s equipment and technology purchasing, issued the award under contract number W912CH-26-D-A073, and it covers both counter-unmanned aerial systems, weapons and sensors built to defeat larger drones, and counter small-unmanned aerial systems, a related category focused on the smaller, cheaper quadcopters and fixed-wing drones that have become ubiquitous on modern battlefields. Neither the Army nor AeroVironment has disclosed exactly which products will fill specific orders or where the systems will be deployed, and the notice states plainly that work locations and funding will be determined order by order rather than fixed up front, leaving open how quickly the Army intends to draw down the full $500 million over the contract’s roughly three-year life, which runs through an estimated completion date of June 29, 2029.

AeroVironment’s counter-drone lineup centers on its Titan family of radio frequency jamming systems, which disable enemy drones by overwhelming the radio signals they rely on for navigation and control rather than shooting them down with a bullet or a missile, a method that avoids collateral damage from falling debris and works even against drones flying too fast or too low for a gun to track reliably. The company built out that portfolio dramatically through its acquisition of BlueHalo, a $4.1 billion deal that closed in May 2025 and brought directed energy weapons and additional counter-drone missile technology into AeroVironment’s product line, including a counter-drone missile system BlueHalo had separately been developing for the Army before the acquisition folded that work into AeroVironment’s broader offering.

This is not AeroVironment’s only recent Army deal built around that shift. The company won an $874 million foreign military sales contract in December 2025 to supply unmanned aircraft and counter-drone systems to allied and partner nations, a separate five-year vehicle aimed at exporting the same kind of technology to countries facing their own drone threats. Taken together with the new $500 million domestic award, AeroVironment has now locked in more than $1.3 billion in counter-drone and drone-related contract capacity within roughly seven months, even before accounting for whatever specific orders eventually get placed under either vehicle.