Counter-UAS

Counter-UAS, short for counter-unmanned aircraft systems, is the detection, tracking and defeat of hostile drones. The field is organised around a cost problem: cheap drones fielded in volume against interceptors that often cost far more than their targets, a mismatch a Chinese military commentator called an "unfavorable cost exchange." The answers range from interceptor drones, guns and nets to lasers, microwave weapons and the software that links sensors to all of them.

Demand comes from incursions at the US southern border, along India's frontier with Pakistan, over European airports and in Russia's drone campaign against Ukraine. The United States has answered with Domestic Shield's roughly $7 billion in contract awards, much of it ceiling rather than funded orders, and with orders to speed approvals, while civil agencies gained their own counter-drone authority. Kinetic defences are shifting towards cheaper interceptor drones, guided gun rounds and nets; lasers have begun downing real drones; and buyers from Denmark to Kuwait are paying for command-and-control networks that fuse sensors and effectors into one picture.

As of October 2026, the US military reported 11 cartel drones downed by laser at the southern border, the director of the Army-led counter-drone task force said a December directed-energy shoot-off at Dugway Proving Ground could end in purchases on the spot, and Ukraine's interceptors stopped about 57 per cent of Russian drones against a needed 85 to 90 per cent.

Incursions and demand

Drone incursions over borders, bases and airports drive the demand. At the September 2026 Falcon Peak exercise, Brig. Gen. Brian Filler of Joint Task Force Southern Border said the military had detected 378 drone incursions in 30 days and called the trend "increasing"; most were commercial off-the-shelf drones carrying cameras for smuggling and human-trafficking operations. The Epoch Times reported in October 2026 that, according to US Northern Command, the task force had downed more than 300 drones since the start of the year. India's Ministry of Defence recorded 863 drone intrusions in its 2025-26 annual report, 854 of them in Punjab and Rajasthan; 237 were shot down and 72 carried narcotics.

In Europe, unexplained sightings close airports. Drones over Luxembourg's Findel Airport on the night of 18 September 2026 forced a precautionary closure and 19 flight diversions, and investigators had identified no drone, operator or motive days later. Lithuania shut Vilnius Airport and NATO scrambled Baltic Air Policing jets in October 2026 over an object that crisis-centre officials said had entered from Belarus; the national crisis centre's director said it could not be fully identified and may have been a flock of birds. The scramble followed Lithuania's first shootdown of an airspace-violating drone, in September 2026.

Russia's campaign against Ukraine has shifted towards faster jet-powered Shaheds. Ukraine recorded 3,177 jet-powered drone launches in September 2026, up from 2,850 drones of all types in August. Figures President Zelensky cited in late September put the interception rate against the jet-powered variant at about 55 to 57 per cent, against more than 90 per cent for the older propeller-driven models.

Procurement and authorities

Domestic Shield is the Department of War's initiative to harden counter-drone defences at high-priority facilities in the United States. Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) and the Army awarded contracts worth roughly $7 billion under it on 28 September 2026, including ten single-award, three-year IDIQ contracts for gun-mounted optics, robotic weapon stations, compact radars and long-range cameras. Much of that value is ceiling rather than funded orders: Ad Hoc News reported that, across the ten-contractor framework, only about $50 million was firmly committed at award. SRC later announced a $10.24 million first delivery order for three Gryphon radars under its ceiling, and in October 2026 Leonardo DRS announced a $500 million-ceiling JIATF-401 IDIQ without naming Domestic Shield or disclosing a task order.

Washington has also moved to shorten the path from purchase to fielding. A memorandum from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth dated 28 September 2026 requires that counter-drone approval requests left unaddressed for 30 days be escalated to his office, bars repeat weapons safety reviews for unchanged systems and sets a general 10-day limit on legal reviews; Hegseth called small unmanned systems "the defining threat of our time." The Army's Global Tactical Edge Acquisition Directorate (G-TEAD) placed a second order for Mountain Horse's FD-1 interceptor within a year, buying a version revised from soldier feedback without waiting on a new requirements cycle. Separately, Hegseth announced a four-star command to scale drone and autonomous warfare across the military, targeted to stand up by 1 October 2027, for which the Pentagon requested $54.6 billion in its fiscal 2027 budget.

Civil agencies are building their own capacity. The SAFER SKIES Act, part of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, extended certain counter-drone authorities to qualified state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement and corrections agencies, and a joint DHS and Justice Department rule requires training, approved technologies, airspace coordination and authorisation before an agency may disable a drone. DHS's National Urban Security Technology Laboratory then had first responders test commercial mitigation systems under operational conditions ahead of federal procurement grants. For the 2026 FIFA World Cup, DHS named Fortem's net-capture DroneHunter the sole kinetic system for US venues, with a $250 million FEMA grant funding equipment and training across 11 host states and the National Capital Region.

Kinetic interceptors

Kinetic defences are shifting towards cheaper, reusable or warhead-free interceptors. Ukraine is racing to field interceptor drones against jet-powered Shaheds: President Zelensky said in October 2026 that five new interceptor models were in testing, including the Zorelit v5 built to chase the faster drones, and that interceptors needed to lift their intercept rate from about 57 per cent to 85 to 90 per cent while imported engines limited production. ASELSAN's GOKALP E1 destroyed a target quadcopter by direct impact in an October 2026 demonstration, and IAI's HawkGuard uses the same warhead-free method, which IAI says reduces blast risk near troops, populated areas and infrastructure. Skapion, a start-up whose system was designed by Iron Dome architect Pini Yungman, claims its counter-swarm system can engage more than 100 targets at once at an interception rate above 97 per cent, figures not independently tested before its first planned live-fire trial; its chief executive targets about $10,000 per interceptor at scale.

Gun rounds and drone-fired shotshells aim at the same price gap. Northrop Grumman puts a guided round from its Raid Hunter 50mm gun at $3,000 to $7,000 and targets a prototype in mid-2027. Federal Ammunition, Mossberg and Palladyne AI are developing SwarmShot, which fits drones with a weapon module firing counter-UAS shotshells to make reusable air-to-air interceptors that coordinate as a swarm.

Nets and steel mesh stop drones physically, and net capture brings them down without an explosion, which Phantom Defense and DHS say limits blast and falling debris near infrastructure and in crowded venues. Ukrainian units fielded more than 50,000 KARAKURT net kits in six months, logging more than 5,000 video-confirmed interceptions, before Phantom Defense acquired their maker in October 2026. The same month, MBDA agreed to sell Fortem's net-capture DroneHunter directly to its customers and to offer FireThorn, a jointly developed radar-guided interceptor that departs from net capture by carrying an MBDA warhead, aimed at Shahed and Geran drones. The Indian Army sought information in September 2026 on three-layer steel mesh shields for command centres and ammunition sites near the Pakistan border, to supplement the jammers, lasers and anti-drone guns it already fields.

Directed energy

Directed-energy weapons cost little per shot and have begun moving from trials into use. The US military said in October 2026 that it had downed 11 cartel drones with lasers at the southern border since deploying them there in August. JIATF-401 picked AeroVironment, Epirus, Kord and Boeing for a homeland directed-energy pilot ordered by the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, and the task force's director, Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, has said systems that perform well at its December shoot-off at Dugway Proving Ground could be bought on the spot. The pilot followed a February airspace closure near El Paso's airport, caused by a miscommunication between agencies over Customs and Border Protection's use of a laser on loan from the Army.

EOS pitches its container-housed, 100 kW-class Apollo laser at a running cost of about $1 per engagement and signed a letter of intent in September 2026 to build it in the Netherlands, following a €71.4 million Dutch order. High-power microwave weapons, which can disable several drones at once, featured beside lasers and guns in a PLA live-fire drill broadcast in October 2026, where commentator Zhang Xuefeng described cheap drones as creating an "unfavorable cost exchange" against far more expensive missile interceptors. BAE Systems unveiled a prototype microwave weapon that the company says defeats fibre-optic-linked drones that jamming cannot stop, and Epirus's Leonidas is the only microwave system among the four in the JIATF-401 pilot.

Sensors and command networks

Linking sensors, effectors and command software into one picture has become a market of its own. Kuwait signed a £370 million deal in October 2026 for a nationwide network run by MARSS's NiDAR AI command-and-control platform, integrating third-party radars, sensors, interceptors and jammers through 2027; the UK Ministry of Defence tied it to Iran's missile and drone attacks in the region. MARSS's Australian parent EOS called it the largest contract in its history and said in October 2026 that conditions including export licences remained outstanding. Raytheon won $729 million for its LIDS system in October 2026 for the US Army, Qatar and Jordan, the first international sales of its KuRFS radar and Coyote effector, which Raytheon says has logged hundreds of combat intercepts.

European militaries are connecting fragmented detection systems. Denmark awarded Systematic what the company calls the first known NATO-member contract for an AI-ready counter-drone command-and-control system, linking its SitaWare software with Terma's OSL counter-drone system after Denmark's Defence Intelligence Service warned in September 2026 of rising Russian hybrid and drone activity. BAE Systems ran its BATS platform through a two-week Scottish trial that fused sensor feeds, cued electronic warfare and a gun in a full detect-to-engage chain, and shared threat data across sites. In the United States, JIATF-401 and the National Nuclear Security Administration agreed a framework to pool counter-drone data over nuclear sites.

Sensors and mobile packages extend the network. Teledyne FLIR launched the Ranger R10-3DX at AUSA in October 2026 as a compact radar that detects micro-drones beyond 3 kilometres and uses AI classification to tell drones from birds, aircraft and vehicles, and Echodyne backed its $250 million Domestic Shield award with a new plant it says will have capacity for more than 30,000 radars a year. The Marine Corps, which planned to field its first ten L-MADIS systems in 2026, had deployed the two-vehicle system, pairing electronic warfare with Stinger missiles, in the Central Command area by September 2026, according to military imagery released that month.