Anduril secures $87M contract for a common counter-unmanned C2 program

The Army-led Joint Interagency Task Force 401 has made one of its first major steps to securing interoperable counter-unmanned systems: selecting Anduril’s Lattice command-and-control software as a common platform for any system bought in the government’s marketplace. 

The $87 million contract is part of a larger agreement the Army signed with Anduril last week, to the tune of up to $20 billion over the next decade, to authorize any federal agency to purchase Anduril’s commercially available products, the company’s chief business officer told reporters Monday.

“There's going to be a push to centralize other [Defense Department] and federal spending against it, and that will all sort of add into the overall discounts that the government receives,” Matthew Steckman said.

The contract isn’t the first of its kind, Steckman added, as enterprise contracts for IT software have been commonplace. It is just more complicated than previous frameworks, because Anduril makes a wide variety of products, from software to drones to virtual-reality headsets.

The Army alone has 120 existing contracts that will migrate into the new enterprise agreement immediately. Beyond that, new purchases will go through Army Contracting Command instead of requiring the creation of a new agreement. 

"The modern battlefield is increasingly defined by software. To maintain our advantage, we must be able to acquire and deploy software capabilities with speed and efficiency," Gabe Chiulli, chief technology officer for the DOD’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, said in a release. "Enterprise contracts are a key part of our modernization strategy, allowing us to consolidate software agreements, eliminate redundancies, and accelerate the delivery of critical tools."

That could include Lattice, which JIATF-401 selected for its counter-unmanned systems, and that the Army is already using to build its next-generation C2 platform. 

“In particular, this will affect very positively the new wave of defense companies coming into the ecosystem, where it's just a massive friction reducer,” Steckman said. 

Asked whether Anduril will announce every new buy that comes through the enterprise agreement, Steckman said the company will continue to publicize major awards.