The Pentagon’s counter-drone task force committed more than $158 million to counter-drone equipment for the US homeland in its first year, the Department of War said on 15 October. A further $25 million went to the southern border and nearly $27 million to bases supporting Operation Epic Fury.
Joint Interagency Task Force 401 replaced the Joint Counter-small UAS Office in August 2025, under a memo from Secretary Pete Hegseth. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross runs it. “The threat is moving quickly, and so are we,” he said.
The review counts money and projects, not results. It gives no number of systems fielded, sites protected or drones stopped.
Most of the projects it lists are about common training, testing and buying. The task force took over the Joint Counter-Small UAS University at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. It set up a marketplace of tested counter-drone products open to the military, other agencies and allies. It ran a joint exercise, Operation Clear Horizon, against drones up to Group 3, and signed a declaration with Britain on common data standards.
It also chose the sites for its directed-energy pilot and tested high-energy lasers with the FAA to set procedures for firing them in US airspace. Its largest buying vehicle came at the end of the year: ten Army contracts on 28 September with ceilings of $4.15 billion between them, of which about $50 million was committed at award.
The review’s figures are a narrower cut than the one the task force gave in April. Then it said more than $600 million had gone to counter-drone capabilities since Operation Epic Fury began, most of it for Central Command.
The task force also supported the World Cup in its 11 US host cities. Through July, federal agencies detected more than 1,600 unauthorized drones and seized more than 700, they told DefenseScoop.
In its second year the task force takes on “the broader counter-unmanned systems mission”, the department said, as it sets up a direct-reporting program manager for unmanned systems. The House’s 2027 spending bill gives the task force $1.4 billion.
