The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has started prototyping commercial and dual-use technology solutions to provide Counter UAS solutions that defeat group 3 and above adversarial threats, ensure the sovereignty of our national airspace, and protect our personnel, equipment, and facilities at home and abroad. Focus areas of the Counter NEXT project include providing a deeper interceptor magazine for our forces while preserving exquisite interceptors for exquisite threats, simplifying and accelerating the reloading process, addressing the cost asymmetry of the current threats and interceptors in use, and integrating with the existing combat systems.&nbsp;DIU and our DoW partners selected Anduril Industries and Zone 5 Technologies to develop prototype solutions for the Counter NEXT program in fall 2024. These vendors were selected from more than 65 commercial and dual-use technology company applicants.Less than a year later, both vendors completed initial design and developmental sprints and successful baseline flight testing of their proposed solutions. Based on the data gathered, warfighter feedback and knowledge gained during the first sprint, iterative improvements are being made to both systems to ensure the solutions address the capability gap before additional flight testing and safety/qualification testing occur in the months ahead.&nbsp;Counter NEXT vendors are incorporating commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components wherever possible to mitigate potential supply chain bottlenecks and keep costs low. The vendors are also leveraging modern air vehicle design concepts, ensuring air vehicles are not over-engineered for their intended mission but that they also minimize the use of expensive materials and enable high-rate production that is not possible with the more exquisite interceptors available today.&nbsp;To enable future design improvements and rapid integration of subsystems and components as they improve, the Counter NEXT prototypes are utilizing a modular open systems architecture and being designed for mass production using modern manufacturing techniques. Additionally, all components of the solution will be qualified and certified to some of the most stringent military standards in order to provide an enduring capability to the warfighter wherever the solution is deployed.“The Counter NEXT project is focused on leveraging the best-in-breed commercially derived technology and processes to accelerate the development, production, and fielding of these vital Counter UAS interceptors to our warfighters,” said Joshua Zike, Counter NEXT Program Manager for DIU.&nbsp; “While this solution is focused on a specific, pressing subset of the counter UxS problem set, variants for all domains should be developed and deployed to provide this vital layered kinetic counter UxS defeat capability to all our warfighters.”&nbsp;Following Anduril and Zone 5’s recent successful flight demonstrations, both vendors received additional funding to further refine their rapid prototypes, integrate their systems with the mission partner’s combat systems, and conduct the safety testing required prior to a live fire test event in the summer of 2026.

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The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has started prototyping commercial and dual-use technology solutions to provide Counter UAS solutions that defeat group 3 and above adversarial threats, ensure the sovereignty of our national airspace, and protect our personnel, equipment, and facilities at home and abroad.

Two Companies Selected to Support DIU’s Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems - NEXT Project

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