In August 2024, the U.S. Army awarded AeroVironment a contract worth up to $990 million to put a tube-launched, backpack-portable killer drone into the hands of conventional infantry soldiers. Nearly two years later, as of mid-2026, task orders under that deal are shaping how American ground troops will carry and employ organic precision strike at the squad level. The Switchblade 400 loitering munition, small enough for one soldier to carry and quiet enough to close on a target before it is heard, is moving from contract language into rucksacks.
What the Army bought and why it skipped a competition
The contract, designated W91CRB-24-D-0011, is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) agreement with a ceiling of $990 million and a performance window running through August 26, 2029. It uses a hybrid cost-plus-fixed-fee and firm-fixed-price structure, meaning some portions cover development and sustainment at cost while others lock in unit prices for production lots.
The Army bypassed competitive bidding by invoking FAR 6.302-7, the federal acquisition regulation’s “public interest” exception, which requires a senior official to determine in writing that skipping full-and-open competition serves a compelling national need. That legal pathway is unusual and signals urgency. The Department of Defense contracts announcement from August 27, 2024, confirms the dollar figure, contract type, and authority.
AeroVironment disclosed the award in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, describing the program as the Army’s Lethal Unmanned Systems Directed Requirement. The company characterized it as the service’s first dedicated effort to equip standard infantry battalions, not just special operations units, with man-portable loitering munitions. That distinction matters: earlier Switchblade purchases were smaller buys for SOF teams or foreign partners. This contract targets the conventional force at scale.
A drone built around the dismounted squad
The Switchblade 400 weighs roughly 5.5 pounds with its launcher, according to AeroVironment’s published specifications. A soldier carries the system in a tube that fits inside or alongside a standard rucksack. To launch, the operator removes the tube’s end caps, powers up the munition, and fires it with a compressed-gas charge. Wings and control surfaces snap open in flight, and the drone climbs to begin loitering over the area of interest.
Through an onboard electro-optical and infrared camera, the operator identifies targets on a handheld control unit, then either commits the Switchblade to a steep terminal dive or waves off and sends it around for another pass. The airframe is small and electric-powered, producing minimal acoustic and visual signature. For a dismounted patrol in dense vegetation or urban terrain, that combination of portability, persistence, and precision addresses a gap that heavier weapons cannot fill as cleanly.
Traditional options for a squad-sized element facing a hidden threat include calling for mortar or artillery fire, requesting close air support, or maneuvering a crew-served weapon into position. Each takes time, coordination, and often a radio link to a fire direction center that may be miles away. A loitering munition launched from the squad’s own position compresses that kill chain from minutes to seconds and keeps the decision with the leader closest to the fight.
Combat history that shaped the buy
The Switchblade 400 is not an untested concept. The United States began shipping the system to Ukraine as part of security assistance packages in spring 2022, a fact documented in multiple DoD press briefings and tracked by the Congressional Research Service. Ukrainian forces used the munitions against Russian infantry positions, light vehicles, and observation posts, providing real-world feedback on the weapon’s strengths and limitations in a high-intensity conventional war.
That combat record almost certainly influenced the Army’s decision to scale up procurement. Lessons from Ukraine, widely discussed in Army professional journals and congressional testimony throughout 2023 and 2024, underscored that small units armed with loitering munitions could strike targets that previously required battalion-level fire support. The pattern was not unique to Switchblade; Iranian-designed Shahed drones, Turkish Bayraktar TB2s, and a proliferating ecosystem of first-person-view racing drones all demonstrated that cheap, expendable unmanned systems were reshaping the close fight.
For Army planners, the takeaway was clear: if adversaries and partners alike were fielding loitering munitions at the platoon and company level, American infantry needed the same capability as standard equipment, not as a special-operations novelty.
Where Switchblade 400 fits in a crowded drone landscape
AeroVironment also manufactures the larger Switchblade 600, which carries an anti-armor warhead and is designed to kill tanks and hardened targets. The 600 is heavier, with a longer range and loiter time, and fills a different tactical niche. The Army’s decision to fund the 400 variant at this scale suggests the service sees the lighter system as the workhorse for dismounted infantry, while heavier loitering munitions may be procured separately for vehicle-mounted or brigade-level use.
Other systems occupy adjacent space. L3Harris produced the Phoenix Ghost, developed specifically for Ukraine under a rapid-prototyping effort. Israel’s UVision markets the Hero family of loitering munitions in several weight classes. And the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, announced in 2023 to accelerate production of autonomous systems across the joint force, has created additional funding streams and competitive pressure for drone makers.
None of those alternatives were evaluated head-to-head against the Switchblade 400 for this particular contract, a consequence of the sole-source pathway the Army chose. Whether the service plans a separate competition for complementary systems, or intends the 400 to serve as its standard man-portable loitering munition for the foreseeable future, has not been spelled out in public budget documents as of June 2026.
What the contract does not tell us
An IDIQ agreement sets a ceiling, not a guarantee. The $990 million figure represents the maximum the Army can spend under this vehicle over five years, but actual obligations depend on individual task orders, annual appropriations from Congress, and shifting operational priorities. If budgets tighten or a superior technology emerges, the service could spend far less than the ceiling.
The public filings also leave several operational questions unanswered. Which units will receive systems first? How many Switchblade 400 rounds does the Army expect to buy per battalion? Will the munition be issued to every rifle company, or concentrated in a dedicated drone section at the battalion level? And how will the system perform against adversaries who employ electronic warfare to jam GPS signals and data links, a tactic Russian forces have used aggressively in Ukraine?
AeroVironment’s published marketing materials list general performance parameters, but no official Army operational test report has been released alongside this contract. Independent assessment of the Switchblade 400’s effectiveness in a contested electromagnetic environment will require either classified testing data or observable fielding results, neither of which is publicly available as of this writing.
From contract ceiling to rucksack reality
The scale of this award marks a turning point in how the Army thinks about organic lethality at the lowest echelons. For decades, precision strike was the province of aircraft, artillery batteries, and missile systems controlled well above the squad. Distributing a GPS-guided, camera-equipped munition to a two-soldier team inverts that model and pushes lethal decision-making to the point of contact.
The real measure of the program’s success will not be the contract’s dollar figure. It will be whether Switchblade 400 systems show up in enough quantity, with enough training and sustainment support, to change the way rifle platoons plan and execute patrols. Task orders filed under W91CRB-24-D-0011 over the next three years will tell that story in hard numbers. Until then, the Army has placed a billion-dollar bet that the future of close combat fits in a backpack.
More from Morning Overview
*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
