US Army and XVIII Airborne Corps engage industry for UAS and intelligence tech

The XVIII Airborne Corps recently hosted the Counter-UAS Integration and Planning Conference, bringing together over 50 companies to develop layered defenses against unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The event focused on evaluating how various sensors, command-and-control developers, and communication providers perform both individually and as an integrated architecture. This testing serves as preparation for the Scarlet Dragon exercise scheduled for September 2026.

In a related effort to modernize military capabilities, the US Army is drafting a ‘characteristics of need’ (CoN) document for intelligence. This guiding document aims to outline broad intelligence-related challenges—ranging from sensing and collection analysis to data exploitation—to solicit innovative solutions from the private sector. Unlike traditional prescriptive requirements, this approach allows industry to propose a wider range of technological solutions for intelligence, command and control, and electromagnetic spectrum operations.