Australia became America’s first ally to complete a purchase on the U.S. military’s new drone marketplace website earlier this month, according to Army officials.
Brent Ingraham, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, told reporters on Tuesday that Australia “successfully procured” a drone off the drone.mil marketplace about 10 days ago.
More than a dozen countries have signed agreements with the U.S. to participate in the marketplace, which the military stood up earlier this year. Unit leaders can place orders directly on the website from approved vendors that meet U.S. military requirements.
A foreign military purchasing items off the marketplace still largely goes through the same process as a traditional military arms sale, though they are figuring out ways to streamline it. When an allied force makes a purchase order, it creates a formal Letter of Request. A few days later, they issue a Letter of Offer and Acceptance, Ingraham explained.
“We still have to use the FMS process as we go through this marketplace, but what we had done is we’ve automated the tools on the back end,” he said. “So instead of the typical timeline of LOR, it’s a letter of request from the ally or partner to buy a system, to a letter of acceptance where they’re ready to send money and deliver it, typically can take months, if not years. We’re doing it in days now.”
“I think realistically we’re probably talking about two weeks to get through the process… from the time they place an order to the time funding comes across and we get everything in place,” Ingraham added. “But we’re continuing to refine that to make that faster and faster.”
It typically takes about 24 hours for an order to be placed to get accepted, with the site only having to validate the buyer. The delivery time is based on the vendor, but for U.S. orders, the department has been “seeing that within 30 days it’s being delivered to the unit or the buyer that is procuring it,” Ingraham said.
Within the first couple months of the marketplace’s unveiling, they’ve done almost $800 million worth of procurement, which includes one-way attack drones, small first-person-view drones, and larger ones as well, Dr. Alex Miller, the Army’s chief technology officer, told reporters earlier this month. He also said there are approximately 100 products on the platform available for purchase.
Joint Interagency Task Force 401 is leading the Pentagon’s homeland counter-drone defense strategy. The task force announced on Tuesday more than $4 billion worth of new indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts to support the marketplace, the protection of critical infrastructure, and other counter-drone requirements.
“What we’re trying to do through the marketplace is to connect those producers with customers so they can see that true demand across the United States, then also with our partners and allies,” Ross said. “A large IDIQ contract will allow companies to raise additional capital to build up their inventory because they have a reasonable expectation that we’re going to continue to partner with them.”
Alien Control Systems, Inc, Digital Force Technology, LLC, DroneShield, LCC, Napatree Technology LLC, L3Harris WESCAM, SRC Inc., and RADA Technologies, LLC were each awarded $500 million contracts. Echodyne Corp. and PVP Advanced EO Systems, Inc. were each given $250 million contracts and SmartShooter Inc. was awarded a $150 million contract.
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The reason they’re buying weapons from different companies is because they do not believe there is a “silver bullet” for drone defense, Brig. Gen. Matthew Ross, the head of JIATF-401, told reporters.
“Protecting against the drone threat… requires a layered defense, and there’s no silver bullet, and so I think at times in the past, people thought that we could just down-select to a really good counter [drone] capability and give one to everybody,” Ross said. “What we’ve seen is that there is no single solution.”
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
