The Pentagon is widening access to its counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) marketplace, an online catalogue meant to let the military, domestic law enforcement, and allied buyers shop for validated counter-drone technology the way one might shop a commercial e-commerce site.
Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401), the Pentagon’s C-UAS coordination hub, announced the expansion August 3 as part of a broader push to speed up how vetted systems move from vendor listing to fielded equipment. The department said the enhancements will let authorized users search by operational requirement, review validated performance data, and complete purchases through a streamlined process, rather than working through separate, disconnected acquisition channels.
A Startup Built the Platform in Under Nine Weeks
The marketplace itself is built and run by Kaizen, a four-year-old software company that JIATF-401 awarded a $15 million contract in early May to prototype the platform. Kaizen CEO Nikhil Reddy told reporters the system was built from scratch and deployed in under nine weeks, going live roughly two weeks before the August update. JIATF-401 had launched an earlier version of the marketplace in late February under a separate, undisclosed contract; the task force has described that first iteration as a starting point meant to be refined.
The platform runs on two Kaizen products: Taproot, described as a library of compliance-engineered building blocks covering forms, permits, applications, reporting, and scheduling; and Blacksmith, an AI tool meant to help users configure those blocks for their own procurement needs. JIATF-401 says a further layer will let users input threat profile, budget, operational readiness, and environment, then generate a recommended capability configuration across the counter-drone kill chain.
Anduril, SMARTSHOOTER, DroneShield, and AeroVironment are currently listing products on the marketplace, according to Reddy. Vendors post technical specifications, repair information, and compliance data, and JIATF-401 administrators approve each listing before it goes live. Access is tiered, filtering buyers by export-control status and classification level.
Purchases Are Still Ramping Up
JIATF-401 reported $13 million in marketplace purchases as of April; that figure had grown to $21 million as of early August, according to task force spokesperson Lt. Col. Adam Scher. Reddy said the platform remains in a slow-rollout phase, with a limited set of orders being used to validate that the ordering and adjudication process works correctly before a wider release to vendors and customers.
Army officials, including Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, have pitched the marketplace as a commercial-style fix for acquisition processes that have historically slowed the delivery of counter-drone systems to units that need them. The effort has taken on added urgency amid the ongoing Iran war, which has exposed a cost-mass mismatch between expensive U.S. interceptors and cheap, Iranian-made drones. Six U.S. soldiers were killed in Kuwait early in the conflict in an Iranian drone attack; some survivors later disputed the Pentagon’s account of the protection troops had in place.
Export Sales and Allied Access
The marketplace also feeds the Army’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Fast Lane initiative, under which industry partners submit products for consideration, and JIATF-401 works with the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Defense Exports and Cooperation to evaluate and pre-clear those products for FMS. Publicly disclosed foreign participants include Australia, Poland, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Romania. State and local law enforcement agencies are also being onboarded, according to Driscoll.
“Drones are a defining threat of our time,” said Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, JIATF-401’s director, citing the danger small systems pose to critical infrastructure and defense assets as the reason the task force is moving to share equipment and best practices more broadly, including with allies.
The C-UAS marketplace can be accessed at cuas.mil by authorized users.
