Army, AeroVironment ink nearly $1B contract for Switchblade killer drones

The Army awarded drone maker AeroVironment a new indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract worth up to $990 million for multiple variants of the company’s Switchblade loitering munitions.

On Tuesday evening, the Defense Department announced that the Army awarded a deal to the company for an “organic, stand-off capability” for dismounted infantry units to destroy tanks, light armored vehicles, hardened targets and enemy personnel. However, it didn’t identify which specific system the service was buying.

“We have no additional information to provide at this time, beyond what is reflected in the initial contract announcement,” a DOD spokesperson told DefenseScoop in an email Wednesday.

But then AeroVironment confirmed in a release on Wednesday that the agreement is for Switchblade drones to meet a “Lethal Unmanned Systems” requirement for the Army. DefenseScoop was later told that both the Switchblade 300 and 600 variants will be provided to the Army under the IDIQ contract.

Deliveries are expected to start in “months,” according to an AeroVironment release.

“AV is proud to have been selected to provide Switchblade for this critical and urgent Army requirement,” Brett Hush, the company’s senior vice president and general manager of loitering munition systems, said in a statement. “Starting with the LUS Directed Requirement, we are well positioned to meet the Army’s emerging needs, leveraging our robust production capability and supply chain capacity to ensure rapid fielding and enhanced combat overmatch for our soldiers.”

Unlike traditional munitions, loitering munitions — also known as kamikaze drones or one-way-attack unmanned aerial systems — can fly around until they identify a target. They destroy their target by crashing into it, and they can be armed with a warhead to enhance their potency.

Funding under the five-year deal will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Aug. 26, 2029, according to DOD’s announcement.

DefenseScoop reached out to a strategic communications director for Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush for comment about the latest award. An Army official directed DefenseScoop’s query to the spokesperson in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

The Switchblade 600 carries high-precision optics and an anti-armor warhead. It has upwards of 40 minutes of loitering endurance, a range of 40-plus kilometers, and a “sprint speed” of 185 kilometers per hour, according to a product description from the vendor. The all-up round weighs 65 pounds.

“As an all-in-one, man-portable solution, Switchblade 600 includes everything required to successfully plan and execute missions and can be set up and operational in less than 10 minutes. Equipped with class-leading, high-resolution EO/IR gimbaled sensors and advanced precision flight control, Switchblade 600 empowers the warfighter with quick and easy deployment via tube-launch, and the capability to fly, track and engage non-line-of-sight targets and armored vehicles with precision lethal effects without the need for external ISR or fires assets,” according to a company product description.

“Patented wave-off and recommit capability allows operators to abort the mission at any time and then re-engage either the same or other targets multiple times based on operator command,” per the description.

Meanwhile, the tube-launched Switchblade 300 Block 20 can be deployed in less than 2 minutes and has a range of 30 kilometers, upwards of 20 minutes endurance, and a “sprint speed” of 161 kilometers per hour. The all-up round weighs only about 7 pounds, according to a product description.

“Cursor-on-target GPS coordinates provide situational awareness, information collection, targeting and feature/object recognition, that together deliver the actionable intelligence and precision firepower needed to achieve mission success across multiple domains,” per the description.

The Army is pursuing the Switchblade 600 for the initial increment of its Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO) program. The service requested $120.6 million to procure LASSO production systems in fiscal 2025 as the U.S. military moves to beef up its arsenal of loitering munitions.

Acquisition of the Switchblade 600 is also being accelerated under the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, which aims to field multiple thousands of autonomous systems by August 2025 to counter China’s military buildup in the Indo-Pacific. Plans call for purchasing more than 1,000 Switchblades to support Replicator, Gen. James Mingus, the Army’s vice chief of staff, told lawmakers in June.

AeroVironment is already delivering Switchblades to the Army under a contract awarded in December 2023 to help meet the service’s Lethal Unmanned Systems-directed requirement, according to the company.