DroneShield told the Australian stock exchange on 30 September that its US arm had won a US$500 million counter-drone contract. Its shares were up 9% by late morning.
The Army made nine more awards of the same kind that day. Its list names ten companies, with ceilings worth $4.15 billion between them. Seven are capped at $500 million each, among them SRC, L3Harris’s Wescam camera unit and RADA Technologies.
Echodyne and PVP Advanced EO Systems got $250 million each. SmartShooter, which makes rifle sights for hitting drones, got $150 million.
A ceiling, not an order
Each award is an indefinite-delivery contract. It caps what the government may spend with one company over three years, and funding “will be determined with each order”, in the Pentagon’s notice. Fifty companies bid.
DroneShield’s filing was careful on that point. It said the contract “does not guarantee any orders” and that the company “can compete for” them. It did not say who it would be competing with.
Col. Tony Lindh, acquisition director of the Pentagon’s counter-drone task force, JIATF-401, told DefenseScoop that $50 million had been committed across all ten. The rest depends on Congress, which has funded the Pentagon only to mid-December under a stopgap.
Who chooses
JIATF-401 replaced the Pentagon’s old counter-drone office in August 2025 and has since been written into law. It decides which counter-drone systems the services can buy. Domestic Shield is its effort to protect military bases and other defence sites inside the US.
The Army’s acquisition chief, Brent Ingraham, said the setup is about “breaking proprietary vendor lock”. Lindh said the task force has now awarded more than $5 billion in ceilings, including roughly $500 million each to AeroVironment and CACI, and plans to reach $7 billion by the end of October.
DroneShield already has kit in US service. In June it won a task force contract worth US$19.3 million, plus US$5.6 million in options, for mobile and fixed-site systems. Its shares remained down more than 60% over twelve months even after the 30 September rise.
