HUNTSVILLE, Ala. –The Army has offered extensive details on its pursuit of new Launched Effects (LE), with the service planning rapid prototyping and forthcoming production efforts for short, medium and long-range capabilities.
Army officials on Tuesday noted an operational demonstration is planned later this year for LE Medium Range after extensive prototyping with several vendors, while the service will select up to two vendors for LE Short Range prototyping this fall and is in the planning stages to initiate LE Long Range in FY ‘26.
“I can tell you today, we are absolutely 100 percent on time [for] meeting every single date in the Launched Effects program,” Col. Danielle Medaglia, project manager for unmanned aircraft systems, said during a discussion at AUSA’s Global Force Symposium here.
Launched Effects is the Army’s program to field new autonomous air vehicles that can be launched from aircraft or ground platforms with a variety of payloads and mission system applications to provide a range of effects for reconnaissance, extended communications links and eventually lethal capabilities.
The Army has cited Launched Effects as key part of its recently announced aviation rebalance, with plans to increase investment in the capability, and unmanned systems more broadly, to include filling in the reconnaissance mission in the wake of the canceled development of the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (Defense Daily, March 7).
“Think of trucks that fly that employ an array of sensors, lethal and non-lethal payloads. You have the short, medium and long-range programs. They’re very promising. That, candidly, created the opportunity for the chief and the secretary to make this hard decision,” Gen. James Rainey, head of Army Futures Command, told reporters here on Tuesday.
Brig. Gen. Cain Baker, director of the Army’s Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team, said the timing of the Army’s aviation restructure “was almost perfect” in terms of coinciding with formulation of Launched Effects plans moving forward.
“We know where we want the launched effects to fly, that’s in the lower-tier of the air domain. And we know the payloads that we want to put on it to be able to do lethal and non-lethal capability,” Baker said.
The Army’s most immediate effort is LE Medium Range, which has included a prototyping effort utilizing Anduril’s Altius 700 air vehicle and several other vendors providing mission systems, payloads and integration work, with an operational demonstration planned for late FY ‘24 to inform production plans.
“We did that from a [Modular Open Systems Architecture] perspective. If we’re really open, let’s have five different vendors come together,” Medaglia said.
Medaglia added the Army is “not compromising” on its open architecture approach to Launched Effects, with an aim to allow for maximum flexibility to rapidly integrate new payloads and capabilities.
“We will not be vendor-locked, whether it’s the air vehicle, whether it’s the payload or whether it’s a mission system. Because, again, with the pace of technology that would not be the smartest thing to do. We need to make sure we can move fast and stay ahead of the threat,” Medaglia said.
For LE Short Range, the Army held an industry day in February as it works toward starting up a prototyping effort this fall with up to two vendors.
The Army has previously said that payload configurations for potential Short Range LE systems may include Electro-Optical/Infra-Red (EO/IR), Radio Frequency Detect, Identify, Locate, Report (RF DILR), lethal/kinetic, communications relay, and RF Decoy systems (Defense Daily, Jan. 2).
Medaglia said the eventual LE Long-Range is expected to be more of a “corps-level asset,” with the Army looking to begin its pursuit of that capability in FY ‘26.
Baker noted the Army’s next Future Vertical Lift-led EDGE experiment in September will be “heavily focused” on Launched Effects, to include asking industry to participate with air vehicles, payloads and new software.
“Let’s see what you can do against these high-end threats to really see where we are inside the industry on capability,” Baker said.