MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. -- Recently, Portfolio Acquisition Executive Marine Corps (PAE MC) Program Manager Ground Based Air Defense (PM GBAD) fielded the Installation-Counter small Unmanned Aircraft System (I-CsUAS) to five installations, meeting the non-kinetic threshold requirements identified in the Capability Development Document.
These requirements include the ability to detect, track, identify, and defeat Group 1 and Group 2 Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). The current baseline configuration consists of passive sensors, radar, and optics.
“To date, the I-CsUAS has successfully detected, tracked, identified, and deterred drones flying in restricted airspace by using non-kinetic capability,” the Fixed Site product manager, Deidre Hooks said. “Our goal from the beginning has been to pursue integrating kinetic defeat capabilities into the current system to pace the ongoing threat.”
A competitive contract for the production, deployment, and sustainment of I-CsUAS was awarded to Anduril Federal, a division of Anduril Industries, Inc. on March 7, 2025. The Fixed Site and Anduril teams worked closely to integrate capability enhancements and test them under operationally realistic scenarios. One such capability enhancement is the kinetic defeat drone interceptor developed by Anduril called Anvil that is easily controlled through the Lattice user interface.
Anvil is a quadcopter designed to autonomously track and, with human operator command, intercept Group 1 and Group 2 UAS using track data provided by the various I-CsUAS sensor modalities. Once a track has been designated as hostile, the I-CsUAS system operator executes the user-friendly Lattice software to successfully defeat threat drones. Lattice fuses multiple sensor modalities and seamlessly integrates kinetic defeat capabilities to accelerate the I-CsUAS kill chain.
The I-CsUAS Anvil kinetic defeat capability was successfully demonstrated at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground outside Yuma, Arizona on March 10, 2026. The system was able to destroy various Group 1 and Group 2 UAS threats.
Integration of Anvil into I-CsUAS and subsequent deployment to Marine Corps Installations is consistent with recent guidance published within the Drone Dominance Memo by the Secretary of War. Procurement of Anvil is a collaborative effort with the Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) 401, whose mission is to rapidly develop, acquire, and deploy countermeasures against small UAS.
In addition to the currently fielded five installations, the PM GBAD Fixed Site team plans to stand up a total of 34 installations by fiscal year 2033 with fully integrated I-CsUAS.