JIATF-401 Domestic Shield: The $500 Million US Counter-Drone Contract Explained

On 1 July 2026, Joint Interagency Task Force 401 awarded AeroVironment a three-year, $500 million sole-source IDIQ to supply counter-drone systems for the Domestic Shield programme, the Pentagon's push to defend US bases and critical facilities against small drones. The first task order, $80.5 million, puts AeroVironment's Titan multi-sensor system, radars, and electro-optical payloads at multiple Air Force Global Strike Command sites. Domestic Shield's design is as much legal as technical: it expands defensive perimeters, streamlines interagency data sharing, and, tellingly, delegates protection authorities to installation commanders. That last provision is the story. Fielding counter-drone hardware on American soil has never been the hard part; the hard part is the legal authority to use it, which US law restricts to a short list of agencies. Domestic Shield is an attempt to build that authority as fast as the radars, and the pace of the legal plumbing, not the sensors, will decide how far a homeland counter-drone market can actually extend.