On May 4, 2026, AeroVironment announced that the U.S. Army had awarded it a prototype agreement to develop and field the Switchblade 400 loitering munition under the service’s Low-Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance program, known as LASSO. The deal places AeroVironment (Nasdaq: AVAV) alongside Textron and Israel’s Uvision in a three-way prototyping competition that will determine which weapon system the Army eventually buys in bulk to give infantry squads their own organic anti-armor strike capability.
Put plainly, the Army wants every rifle squad to carry a weapon that can fly, hunt, and kill an armored vehicle without calling in a helicopter or an artillery mission. The Switchblade 400 is designed to do exactly that: a tube-launched drone small enough to ride in a rucksack, quiet enough to approach undetected, and lethal enough to destroy light armor or a fortified fighting position on impact.
What the Switchblade 400 actually does
The Switchblade 400 sits between two better-known siblings in AeroVironment’s lineup. The Switchblade 300, weighing roughly 5.5 pounds, was built as an anti-personnel weapon and saw extensive use by Ukrainian forces beginning in 2022. The Switchblade 600, at about 50 pounds, carries a larger anti-armor warhead but requires a heavier launch setup. The 400 bridges that gap: portable enough for a single operator yet fitted with a warhead AeroVironment describes as capable of defeating armored targets at medium range.
In practice, a soldier unpacks the launch tube, powers up the system, and sends the munition into the air in minutes. Once airborne, the Switchblade 400 loiters over the battlefield on electric propulsion, feeding live video back to the operator through onboard electro-optical and infrared sensors. When the operator identifies a target, the munition dives at high speed, detonating its warhead on contact. If the target moves or the situation changes, the operator can wave off the attack and re-engage, a flexibility that traditional mortar rounds and rockets cannot match.
AeroVironment has not published exact range, endurance, or warhead specifications for the LASSO variant, and the Army has not released those details either. Earlier Switchblade models have had publicly cited ranges of roughly 10 kilometers (for the 300) and 40-plus kilometers (for the 600), so the 400 likely falls somewhere in between, though that remains unconfirmed for this specific configuration.
Why the Army wants loitering munitions at the squad level
LASSO is part of a broader Army push to distribute precision firepower to the smallest tactical units. For decades, engaging an enemy armored vehicle from the infantry required either a heavy anti-tank missile like the Javelin, which weighs more than 35 pounds per round and launcher, or a call for fire from artillery or aviation assets that might take minutes to arrive. Loitering munitions compress that kill chain. A squad leader spots a threat, launches a drone from behind cover, confirms the target on a tablet-sized screen, and strikes, all without exposing anyone to direct fire and often before the enemy crew knows it is being watched.
The concept is not theoretical. Ukraine’s battlefield experience since 2022 has demonstrated that small, cheap drones and loitering munitions can destroy tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and supply trucks at a fraction of the cost of a guided missile. The U.S. Army has studied those lessons closely, and LASSO is one of several programs aimed at translating them into fielded American capability. The Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office and its Close Combat Lethality Task Force have both flagged organic squad-level strike as a priority.
Selecting three vendors for competitive prototyping, rather than handing a sole-source contract to one company, signals that the Army wants to pressure-test real hardware before committing. Each vendor will deliver working systems, and soldiers will evaluate them under conditions meant to simulate contested, dispersed operations where small units cannot rely on nearby fire support.
The competition: Textron and Uvision
Textron Systems, a subsidiary of Textron Inc., produces a family of loitering munitions and unmanned systems and has supplied weapons to the U.S. military and allied nations for years. Its specific LASSO candidate has not been publicly named in available reporting, but the company’s portfolio includes systems in the man-portable class.
Uvision, an Israeli firm, manufactures the Hero series of loitering munitions, which range from the small Hero-30 to the larger Hero-400EC. Several Hero variants have been adopted by NATO and allied militaries, giving Uvision a track record of international sales and, in some cases, combat validation. The Hero-120, for example, has been integrated onto U.S. Marine Corps platforms.
Both competitors bring credible technology and operational pedigrees. AeroVironment’s advantage is brand recognition with U.S. ground forces: the Switchblade 300 has been in the Army’s inventory for over a decade, and the company’s Puma and Raven small drones are already standard-issue reconnaissance tools. Familiarity with AeroVironment’s control interfaces and logistics chain could matter when the Army evaluates training burden and sustainment costs alongside raw performance.
What the deal is and what it is not
The prototype agreement is not a production contract. It was executed under an Other Transaction Authority (OTA) mechanism, which allows the Army to move faster than traditional acquisition but also means the deal’s dollar value is not necessarily disclosed publicly. No source reviewed for this article has published a contract value, and the Army has not issued its own press release with financial details.
AeroVironment’s announcement stated that the award “establishes Switchblade 400 as a key component of the Army’s LASSO program,” language that frames the weapon as central to the effort. That characterization comes from the vendor, not from the Army, and should be read accordingly. What is independently confirmed across defense and financial outlets is that AeroVironment holds one of three prototype agreements and that the Army intends to evaluate all three systems before selecting a winner.
The timeline for comparative testing, the number of units to be delivered during the prototype phase, and the criteria for down-selection have not been made public. Nor has the Army detailed how it will handle doctrinal questions that loitering munitions raise at the squad level, including rules of engagement for autonomous-capable weapons, target identification procedures, and deconfliction with other fires in a crowded battlespace.
What this means for the soldiers who will carry it
If LASSO succeeds, the infantryman’s toolkit changes in a fundamental way. A squad that once depended on a Javelin gunner or a radio call to a fire direction center gains the ability to find and destroy an armored threat on its own, from behind a ridge or inside a tree line, with a weapon that weighs a fraction of a missile system. That capability matters most in the kind of dispersed, communications-degraded fights the Army expects in a potential conflict with a near-peer adversary, where units may operate beyond the reach of traditional fire support for hours or days.
The tradeoff is complexity. Every new system a soldier carries demands training time, battery power, and cognitive bandwidth. The vendor that wins LASSO will need to prove not just that its munition flies far and hits hard, but that a tired, stressed 11-Bravo can operate it reliably after minimal instruction, in rain, dust, and darkness. That human-factors test may ultimately matter as much as any spec sheet.
For now, the Switchblade 400’s selection for LASSO confirms that AeroVironment remains one of the Pentagon’s go-to suppliers for small tactical drones and loitering munitions. Whether it wins the eventual production contract depends on what happens when all three systems go head-to-head in the field. The Army has set the stage for a genuine competition, and the outcome will shape how American infantry fights for the next decade.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
