The US Department of Defense has rolled out an expanded digital marketplace designed to speed up how military units, law enforcement agencies and partner forces buy counter-drone equipment.
The platform was built by the Pentagon’s dedicated counter-drone unit, Joint Interagency Task Force 401, together with New York-based software developer Kaizen Laboratories, under a $15 million contract.
Through the portal, authorized buyers can search available systems by operational requirement, review verified performance data, and purchase approved hardware ranging from radio-frequency jammers to kinetic interceptors.
The push to streamline counter-drone purchasing reflects how quickly small unmanned aircraft have moved from a niche battlefield problem to a mainstream force-protection concern. Cheap first-person-view and swarming drones have been used against bases, ports and troop formations in several recent conflicts, and defence planners have struggled to keep pace with a market flooded by dozens of competing jammer, radar and interceptor products of varying quality. A vetted online catalogue lets commanders and procurement officers compare tested systems side by side instead of running separate evaluations for every unit, which should shorten the time between identifying a gap in base defences and actually fielding equipment to close it.