JIATF-401 at one year: how the Pentagon’s counter-drone task force buys and fields systems

The Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401), created in August 2025 to speed counter-drone equipment to U.S. forces, has published a one-year account of how it works, built around a single marketplace for buying vetted systems and a shift to layered, networked defences against small drones.

The account comes from the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center and was distributed through DVIDS on 27 October. It quotes the task force’s Rapid Acquisition Chief, Col. Tony Lindh, who describes the unit as a jointly manned organisation drawing personnel from across the U.S. military services, with embedded experts from other federal bodies.

A single marketplace for counter-drone kit

The best-known tool is drones.mil, which the task force describes as a first-of-its-kind centralised marketplace. According to Lindh, it aggregates demand so that authorised users in the joint force, other federal agencies, allies and partners can buy validated and tested technologies more quickly. He says the task force also uses “unique procurement and acquisition authorities” to bypass traditional timelines, and that pooling demand is meant to widen the industrial base and lower costs.

Federal partners embedded in the task force include U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Aviation Administration, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Communications Commission, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the U.S. Secret Service. The mix reflects the fact that drones are a concern for homeland security and critical infrastructure as well as for the battlefield.

From single systems to “systems of systems”

Lindh says operations have moved away from an air-defence mindset in which one system is expected to give near-perfect protection. The task force now favours what he calls a layered “systems-of-systems” approach. “There is no silver bullet technology that will solve the drone problem,” he said, adding that people, policy, permissions and training matter as much as hardware.

To make that work, the task force says it has secured an enterprise-wide agreement on a common tactical user interface and standardised data protocols. The stated goal is plug-and-play integration, so that sensors and effectors from different makers can share threat data. Lindh also says the task force is pursuing software-defined, hardware-enabled systems that can be updated over the air as drone designs change.

Testing and training

New capabilities are tested in battle labs, in joint exercises and alongside allies and partners, Lindh says, including in several theatres. One example is Falcon Peak 26.2 at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, described as a counter-small-drone experiment run for North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command. Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle reviewed a new counter-drone system there on 24 September, according to the photo caption on the DVIDS release.

On training, JIATF-401 has taken oversight of the Joint Counter-UAS University at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and introduced a train-the-trainer model to spread expertise across the joint force. Its personnel are also embedded at the FBI’s National Counter-UAS Training Center, which the account describes as the first dedicated federal hub for training law enforcement and security professionals to detect, assess and counter unlawful drone activity.

Why it matters

The release is an official self-assessment and gives no figures on systems fielded or drones stopped, so its claims of results cannot be independently checked. It does show the direction of U.S. policy: cheap drones are now treated as a standing threat requiring faster buying rules, shared standards and joint training. The same demand is visible in the National Guard, where trainers say counter-drone skills now dominate requests from units; Geopolitiki reported this in Pennsylvania Guard trainers say counter-drone skills now dominate demand from U.S. units.