# Anduril DHS Counter-UAS IDIQ On **August 5, 2026**, the [[Department of Homeland Security]] posted awards on a five-year [[IDIQ]] for counter-unmanned aircraft systems, capped at **$1.5 billion combined**. [[Anduril]] won a position on **one of the two tracks** — and filed a [[Bid Protest]] a week later arguing it should have won both. > **Read the ceiling carefully.** Anduril holds a seat on Track 2 only, whose ceiling is **$489M shared among seven awardees**. It does *not* hold $1.5B, and it does not hold the $1.011B hardware track. Each awardee received a **$250 minimum guarantee** at award — the floor is nominal, and the real value is whatever task orders it wins off the vehicle. ## The two tracks | | Track 1 — hardware/software | Track 2 — comprehensive services | |---|---|---| | Ceiling | $1.011B | $489M | | Scope | Hardware, software, plus training, maintenance, installation, customization | Counter-drone as a fully managed service; systems integration; RDT&E support | | Offers received | 57 | 47 | | Awardees | Dedrone Defense, D-Fend Solutions AD, [[Leidos]], Fortem Technologies, CACI Inc.-Federal, [[BAE Systems]] Technology Solutions & Services, EMS Defense Technologies | Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics Information Technology, Parsons Government Services, BAE Systems Technology Solutions & Services, Leidos, **Anduril Industries**, Astrion Group | Fourteen positions across twelve companies; only Leidos and BAE hold both tracks. Ordering runs **Aug. 1, 2026 – July 31, 2031**. DHS solicited it as **full and open competition** (posted to SAM.gov in December 2025, proposals due Dec. 8), with the Office of Procurement Operations contracting and the **Science and Technology Directorate** funding. The department reserved the right to reopen periodically for new vendors and to drop contractors idle for a year. Capability floor in the statement of work: detect a drone at **≥2 km**, track **≥3 UAS simultaneously**, neutralize at **≥500 m**, with track history refreshing in **≤20 seconds**. DHS cited fixed sites — airports, government facilities — plus portable systems carried, vehicle-mounted, or deployed from aircraft and vessels, and named national special security events among the drivers. ## The protest Anduril filed with the [[Government Accountability Office]] on **August 12, 2026**, challenging DHS's evaluation of its proposal and arguing it should have received awards on **both** tracks. A GAO decision is **due by November 20, 2026**. Bidders were permitted to pursue both tracks, and Anduril did. The docket number was not public as of this writing, and the protest was reported by trade press rather than sourced from gao.gov directly — see [Sourcing](#sourcing) below. ## Why this matters **Anduril builds exactly what Track 1 buys.** The [[Anduril Anvil]] kinetic interceptor, [[Anduril Roadrunner]], [[Anduril Sentry Tower]] detection radar, [[Anduril Pulsar]] electronic warfare and [[Anduril Lattice]] command-and-control are a counter-drone hardware stack in the literal sense of the track's scope. It lost that track to a field of legacy primes — BAE, CACI, Leidos — plus a Utah small business, **Fortem Technologies**, which announced itself as the only small business among the seven and named [[Lockheed Martin]] and [[Microsoft]] as subcontractors on its team. **What Anduril won is the wrapper, not the widget.** Track 2 is managed services, integration and test support — structurally the lower-margin, more commoditized half, and the opposite of the product-company identity Anduril markets. Its Track 2 competitors are Booz Allen, GDIT and Parsons: the services-integrator bench, not the autonomy bench. A company whose entire pitch is that it builds things rather than billing for integration ended up on the integration track. **It is a rare competed data point.** Most of the vault's [[Anduril Contracts]] ledger records awards where a customer named Anduril or bought a specific product: the [[Anduril $20B Army Contract]] enterprise agreement, the [[Anduril CBP 363M Sentry Tower Contract]], the Marine Corps sole-source c-UAS intent of June 2026, the [[Anduril Kuwait Counter-UAS FMS Approval]]. This one ran full and open against 57 competitors on the hardware side — and Anduril's counter-drone incumbency did not carry. The honest reading of the ledger after August 5 is that Anduril's c-UAS position is **strong where a customer specifies it and untested-to-weak in open competition**, which is a different claim than the dossier previously supported. **Second DHS surface, different mission.** Anduril's existing DHS business is border: towers, [[Anduril Sentry Tower]], the CBP contract, the tripling documented in [[CBP Integrated Surveillance Tower Expansion]]. This vehicle covers airports, federal facilities and national special security events — domestic airspace defense as a general-purpose procurement category rather than a border program. Anduril is not the incumbent there, and the [[Perennial Autonomy $500M JIATF-401 Counter-Drone Contract]] is a reminder the counter-drone field now has more than one insurgent in it. ## What to watch - **The GAO decision, due Nov 20, 2026** — 17 days after the midterms. Three outcomes read very differently: **sustained** (DHS mis-evaluated), **denied** (a competed federal panel scored Anduril's hardware proposal below BAE/CACI/Fortem — the more informative result), or **corrective action** (DHS reopens, conceding a problem without saying so). See [[Bid Protest]]. - **A GAO B-number appearing on gao.gov**, which would let the docket be cited directly rather than through trade press. - **First task orders on USASpending** under the Track 2 vehicle. The seat is worth what Anduril wins off it, not the ceiling. - **Whether DHS reopens the vehicle** for new vendors, which the solicitation permits and which would give Anduril a second route into Track 1 regardless of the protest. ## Sourcing The award itself is well-documented (ExecutiveBiz working from USAspending postings; FedScoop; the DHS SAM.gov solicitation). The **protest** rests on a single originating report — Washington Technology, Nick Wakeman, August 14, 2026 — which was not directly fetchable; its text was confirmed via a syndicated reproduction. The protest filing date and the Nov 20 deadline both come from that reporting. ## See Also - [[Anduril]] - [[Anduril Contracts]] — consolidated contract ledger - [[Anduril Watch Log]] — where this was first logged (2026-08-14, 2026-08-05) - [[Department of Homeland Security]] - [[Government Accountability Office]] - [[Bid Protest]] - [[IDIQ]] - [[Counter-Drone]] - [[Anduril CBP 363M Sentry Tower Contract]] - [[Anduril Kuwait Counter-UAS FMS Approval]] - [[Perennial Autonomy $500M JIATF-401 Counter-Drone Contract]] - [[Anduril Events]]