The US Army selected AeroVironment's Switchblade 400 under the Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO) Other Transaction Authority on Monday 4 May 1. The Army is requesting $110 million in LASSO procurement for fiscal year 2027 (FY2027) with a planned ceiling of approximately $1.2 billion through FY2031 2. Annualised, that funds roughly 200 to 400 Switchblade-class munitions a year against the Pentagon's 300,000-drone procurement target. AeroVironment declined to disclose the prototype contract value.
Switchblade 400 has a 65 km range, 35-minute endurance, and an all-up weight of 39 lbs, deployable by a single soldier in under five minutes with day-night electro-optical / infrared (EO/IR) sensors and autonomous target recognition. In practice, that pulls Russian armoured columns inside loitering reach from 6.2 miles to over 40. The 400 sits between the existing Block 2 SB 600 and SB 300 already running under an $1 billion August 2024 contract and a $186 million February 2026 delivery order. AeroVironment now operates SB 300, SB 400, and SB 600 simultaneously inside Army programmes, the broadest US loitering munition coverage on offer.
The Pentagon's Lethality Prize and the Mountain Horse Solutions kinetic win sit alongside this award inside the same Gauntlet II munitions architecture. Anti-tank loitering reach jumping from 10 km to 65 km changes which echelon owns the deep-strike fires problem: brigade rather than divisional artillery.
A $1.2 billion ceiling spread across six fiscal years averages $200 million annually, modest against the $54.6 billion DAWG line and well below the volume the Pentagon's stated 300,000-drone target would imply. The annual run rate places LASSO inside the procurement-frame envelope rather than the production-rate envelope that DAWG would otherwise fund.
