US Army likely to consolidate UAS acquisition programmes in future

Vendors at Experimental Demonstration Gateway Event (EDGE) 2024 tested some autonomous capabilities that could become requirements for the LE programme. (US Army Yuma Proving Ground)

The tactical unmanned aircraft system (UAS) programmes in the US Army might be all over the place now, but this could change in the coming years, said senior officials on 27 September.

The Future Tactical UAS (FTUAS), company-level UAS, and the Launched Effects (LE) programmes are very similar efforts across Army Futures Command's (AFC's) portfolio, said Doug Bush, army's assistant secretary of Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event. These different programmes may appear “scattered”, but that is intentional, he said.

“We're placing a lot of bets because we need to see what's going to work here, and we need soldiers to experiment with it and learn,” Bush said.

For now, this approach is necessary “given the diversity of the tech”. “At some point, it'll probably coalesce a bit more into bigger programmes,” he said.

While there are three programmes that cover similar capabilities, the programmes will expand into multiple branches. This is partially because of capability needs within the programme and partially because the army is considering buying multiple vendors instead of downselecting to just one.

For example, in the LE realm, the army has funding across “the next five years” to fulfil three echelons with different vendors for short-, medium-, and long-range capabilities in addition to “doing more work on our reconnaissance assets”, according to Bush.