In a sweeping overhaul of U.S. military strategy on anti-drone warfare, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has directed Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll to establish a joint interagency task force to ramp up the nation’s ability to counter hostile unmanned aerial systems (UAS). “America will be the best at it,” Hegseth declared.
“Our job here at the Pentagon — when you think about it — is to prepare for the threats of the future and build a force to match them, and defeat them, and outpace them,” Hegseth said in a video message released August 28, 2025. “And there’s no doubt that the threats we face today from hostile drones grow by the day.”
In a memo dated August 27, Hegseth places the U.S. Army at the fulcrum of change in what is envisioned as a powerful, integrated effort to counter UAS. The new task force — Joint Interagency Task Force 401 or JIATF 401 — will be “a new unified team that’s going to bring together our best talent from all our agencies to counter these threats and restore control of our skies,” Hegseth said in the video.
The memo also directs Driscoll to terminate the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-sUAS) Office, which was created in 2019 and led by the Army. The office has been criticized for lacking “teeth to enforce purchase” of effective systems, leading to fractured acquisition and deployment capabilities, the Defense Magazine website reported. It will cease to exist when JIATF 401 is formed, the memo says.
JIATF 401 will be better positioned to address those weaknesses. The task force’s director will have “acquisition and procurement authority,” can “approve up to $50 million in funding per effort for initiatives to C-sUAS,” and will have “special hiring authority with exemption from established competitive processes.” It also will consolidate work on “forensics, exploitation, and replication for C-sUAS.”
The new task force is designed “to better align authorities and resources to rapidly deliver Joint C-sUAS capabilities to America’s warfighters, defeat adversary threats, and promote sovereignty over national airspace,” Hegseth’s memo states. The Defense Department “must focus on speed over process … with expanded authorities to execute capability development and delivery timelines that outpace the threat.”
“We’re moving fast — cutting through bureaucracy, consolidating resources and empowering this task force with the utmost authority to outpace our adversaries,” Hegseth said in the video. He said the Department of Defense is working to deliver real solutions and ensure U.S. airspace is secure at home, abroad and wherever U.S. service members are. “They deserve to be defended by the best,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth said JIATF 401 will put the right tools in the hands of warfighters so they can defend U.S. airspace and “send a clear message to the world that the United States will never be outmatched. Because, make no mistake, under this administration and President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, we’re going to out-innovate, we’re going to lead and we will win,” Hegseth concluded.