Counter-drone systems proliferate at AUSA Global Force Symposium 2026

Welcome to Defense Dollars, your update on the defense and aerospace markets around the world and what's making the numbers move

Let's dive right in. First up, the Association of the United States Army's Global Force 2026 Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama

saw a number of debuts from defense companies along a very certain theme, drone defense

Among them, the announcement was the unveiling of a joint project from industry stalwarts of high risk

General Dynamics, Land Systems, and Kodiak AI. The three companies combined to create the Leonidas, a new autonomous mobile system meant to counter drone swarms

We spoke to the CEO of Epirus on the show floor to learn more about the system

Hi, I'm Andy Lowry, Chief Executive Officer of Epirus. What you have here today is what we call a Leonidas AGV, or Autonomous Ground Vehicle

This is really a coming together of three different companies, sort of like a team of three

We have first EPRIS that takes care of the drones and the drone defense. That's this big antenna you see in the back with a nice looking drone eating face on it

It's a counter drone system. It's a close in weapon system, but it's made out of electromagnetic energy

The system is able to scan very quickly in an instant and create shields of energy that can defend against any kind of drone

dark drones, fiber optic controlled, swarms of drones. It's a true sort of last line of defense

and maybe the closest thing that humanity has ever made as far as a force field goes

The vehicle itself is a modification of a Ford F600 that was performed by our partners GD Land Systems

General Dynamic Land Systems, including all the sensors and the ruggedizing of the axle

and that sort of a thing. And then the final company is named Kodiak Defense

who does all the automation. So even though this looks like a vehicle and can be a vehicle that you can just drive down the road like you're driving a Ford F-250, you can also fully automate it so you need nobody inside

The thing can move around. We can control it like a video game. We can pre it in dangerous areas in order to provide that force field of drone protection out in front of the maneuvering forces out in front of the Army front line This particular drone defensive system is very very low collateral It has virtually no other effects so you can use it in urban settings or domestically

It puts out sort of a very intense electromagnetic interference field so that drones that have consumer electronics, computer boards

they get into the field and they no longer are able to withstand the electromagnetic energy

that's sort of causing them to do things they don't expect. So in a falling out of the sky, we have proven that we can take down huge swarms, 50 drones and more, that we can take down in a single shot

So it's highly effective. It is a close-in system. So like similar to like a CWIZ, a close-in weapon system that uses bullets to do that final line of effect

This is using electromagnetic bullets, so to speak, in order to form a final line of defense against group one, group two, or even in cases, group three drones

This is brand new. We're world revealing this. This is something that the Army even wasn't expecting

We're going to talk to the Army more about it during the next couple days. They're very, very excited

They want to see a lot of the short range air defense and the air defense being mobile

And we've delivered just on that. We started out and we were in sort of a prototype testing phase

We had done several prototype tests and had done even a couple deployments

alongside our Army customer. Now things have just gone off the hook. I mean we're getting every GCC ally in the Middle East right now

are asking us for quotes. Shortest we can deliveries. We're having to spike our

manufacturing up, establish new partnerships with our gallium nitride partner named MAKOM. We've done a lot of different things to kind of ramp for

this really, really incredible moment for EPRES because we were built to defend

lives and defend equipment against these harassing drones. Gale is the name of the

game now for us. We spent about three years proven market fit tailoring the

solution to make sure it was the right type of system in order to be effective

in a battle or a confrontation like we see and now is our moment and now the

point is scale we have to figure out how to get manufacturing up in the United

States we have to get our supply chain up and running and all of that has to

happen in a moment's notice because the war is not waiting the conflicts not

waiting and these people are in desperate need of systems like this that can protect lives equipment and other very important targets also on the floor at Global Force 2026 AeroEnvironment unveiled the latest iteration of its Locust counter system

which uses laser technology to bring down incoming threats. New on the floor, the Locust 3, meant to be able to fight back larger Class 3 drones

such as the Shahed, used by Iran in strikes against the U.S. forces recently

We stop by the AV booth to learn more about it. So our Locust Directed Energy product here at AV has started off for the past few years as our X2 variant

which is focused on that Group 1 and 2 fights, so the smaller drones

Now what we're introducing today is our Locust X3, which is taking all of that heritage and success that we've had overseas

and scaling that to a new fight of these Group 3 and threats beyond that

Our AV Locust system, the X3 that we're unveiling here today, is an integrated camera payload

So you have multiple different camera types inside of the system and an embedded laser weapon system that shoots out a single beam of light many miles away to kill these drones at meaningful standoff ranges

So it's a full-up integrated piece of kit that's able to go on a variety of different platforms, ISV, JLTV, Striker, and then FixSight as well

We're focused on four core competencies. One is modularity, so making sure that we can upgrade

in field and always have the best of breed capability. Second to that, we're working on

maintainability, meaning that these modules that we're introducing today allow for operators in

fields to be able to do maintenance and repairs without having to take the system offline

The third tenant that we're focused on is lethality, so scaling that directed energy

like we talked about from group one and two, all the way up into that group three fight that we

see so prevalent in Europe and in the Middle East today. And last but certainly not least

we're focused on platform agnosticism. And what that means is that we're focusing on

making sure that we can put this particular weapon system on any platform, whether that be the ISV

the JLTV, the striker, fixed site, maritime, locusts ready anytime, anyplace for the fight

of the future and the fight of today Elsewhere around the defense industry defense giant Northrup has landed two government contracts this week worth a combined total of more than billion The first is a deal with the U Navy worth over million with options to grow to nearly million

to keep building and upgrading an advanced electronic warfare system that helps protect American warships from enemy missiles and drones

by detecting and jamming threats before they can strike. That system is already deployed on some of the Navy's most important vessels, including destroyers and aircraft carriers

On top of that, the U.S. Army awarded Northrop a separate nearly $900 million contract to produce a new type of tank ammunition

specifically for the iconic M1 Abrams tank that is designed to replace four older ammunition types with one single, more versatile round

capable of taking out personnel, light vehicles, and fortified positions. Work on both contracts is expected to continue through the early part of the next decade

And one more before you go, if you want to know if your defenses actually work

you have to test them against the real thing. And that's what the GQM-163A Coyote is built for

This drone missile is the only one of its kind made in America

And it exists for a sole purpose, to pretend to be an enemy anti-ship missile

so that U.S. Navy and its allies can practice shooting it down before they ever face the real thing in battle

And here's where it gets impressive. This thing screams across the ocean at more than two and a half times the speed of sound

flying just 15 feet above the water's surface, making it extraordinarily difficult to detect and intercept

It can also pull high-speed evasive maneuvers, deploy electronic countermeasures to full radar systems, and even launch a high-diver variant that climbs to over 50,000 feet before diving down on its target at near hypersonic speeds

At just 18 feet long and roughly the size of a large telephone pole, the Coyote is compact, cost-effective, and has been tested at five launch sites around the world, making it a sophisticated and important training tool for the U.S. Navy

That wraps up your defense dollars for this week. Join us on Cheddar.com and DefenseNews.com for more stories like these