AeroVironment (AV) landed a U.S. Army prototype agreement on May 4 for its Switchblade 400 loitering munition under the Low-Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance program.
The LASSO award establishes Switchblade 400 as a key component of the Army’s loitering munition architecture, covering rapid development, delivery, and testing. “This award reflects the Army’s confidence not only in Switchblade 400, but in AV’s ability to deliver at scale,” said Trace Stevenson, President of Autonomous Systems at AV. “Being selected under the LASSO program positions AV as a long-term partner to the Army as it modernizes its loitering munition capabilities, from development and testing through production, fielding, and continuous capability evolution,” Stevenson said.
The Switchblade 400 is AeroVironment’s medium-range, man-portable anti-armor loitering munition — a system the company calls the “Lightweight Tank Destroyer.” The entire all-up round weighs under 40 pounds, sized to fit common launch tubes and designed to be carried and employed by a single soldier. That combination of portability and anti-armor lethality is the system’s defining value proposition: a soldier at the tactical edge who can detect, identify, and engage an armored target through a unified networked architecture, without waiting for air support, artillery, or a heavier weapons platform to come into range. The sensor-to-shooter concept of operations at the heart of the Switchblade 400 shortens decision timelines while keeping the engagement in the hands of the soldier on the ground.
What distinguishes the 400 from its predecessors in the Switchblade family is its integration architecture. It is the first loitering munition purpose-built to operate within AV_Halo, AeroVironment’s modular command-and-control ecosystem, and it incorporates advanced aided target recognition (ATR) along with autonomous capabilities to detect, classify, and engage targets day or night in denied and contested environments. The ATR capability matters in exactly the environments where GPS jamming, communications disruption, and sensor degradation are most likely — it gives the system a degree of autonomous target identification that reduces its dependence on continuous operator input during the terminal phase of an engagement. Combined with anti-armor performance the company describes as comparable to the larger Switchblade 600 Block 2, the 400 delivers a capability previously associated with heavier systems in a package a single soldier can carry.
The system is built around a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) in its design architecture, a deliberate choice that ensures the platform can be upgraded, modified for interoperability, and adapted as threats and missions evolve without requiring a clean-sheet redesign. For a program that the Army is investing in as a long-term capability rather than a single-generation solution, MOSA compliance is effectively a hedge against obsolescence — it keeps the door open for capability insertions that don’t exist yet and for integration with future systems that haven’t been designed.
“Switchblade 400 is the product of continuous feedback from the field and the soldiers who rely on our systems in real-world operations,” said Brian Young, Senior Vice President of Loitering Munitions at AV. “We are constantly leaning forward, integrating new capabilities, enhancing performance, and reducing the burden on the warfighter. That soldier-driven approach is central to how we develop, test, and deliver capability for the Army,” Young said.
The LASSO prototype agreement arrives on top of an already substantial Switchblade production commitment from the Army. A recent $186 million delivery order covered Switchblade 600 Block 2 and Switchblade 300 Block 20 explosively formed penetrator loitering munition systems — the Army’s first Switchblade order containing an EFP payload, delivering enhanced lethality against armored threats. That order falls under the Army’s existing five-year, $990 million Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contract under the Lethal Unmanned Systems Directed Requirement, awarded in August 2024. The LASSO agreement is a separate Other Transaction Authority award, establishing a development and testing track for the 400 that runs alongside the production pipeline already delivering Switchblade variants to soldiers.
“The Army’s trust in the Switchblade family has been earned through years of real-world use by soldiers who rely on these systems every day,” said Jimmy Jenkins, Executive Vice President of Precision Strike and Defense Systems at AV. “That trust reflects a clear operational need for precision, speed, and adaptability at the tactical edge — capabilities the Switchblade family is designed to deliver as missions and threats continue to change,” Jenkins said.
The Switchblade family’s track record in real-world operations, including documented use in Ukraine, has given the Army a level of confidence in AeroVironment’s products that is difficult to manufacture through testing alone. A loitering munition that has been employed in combat, refined based on field feedback, and continuously updated by a manufacturer that treats soldier input as a primary design driver is a different kind of risk profile than a system that exists only in test range data. For the Army building out its loitering munition architecture for the next decade, that operational pedigree is as important as any specification on a data sheet.
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