RF, EW & detection

Every counter-drone kill chain opens the same way: find the emitter, fix it in the spectrum, then choose between a six-figure interceptor and a jamming waveform that costs pennies. Detect-and-jam is the toll booth of the layered drone-defense build-out — a large share of counter-UAS spend enters through an RF sensor (radar- and EO-centric programs like LIDS are the exception that proves the layering), and most engagements still end with electronic attack because it is the only kill that scales to swarm economics.

Who owns it

The fielded-fleet incumbents, and the moat is data dressed as hardware. DroneShield is the lone listed pure-play — 2025 revenue up 277%, SaaS up 312% — and has landed its first direct DoD contract, an up-to-A$24.9M award (A$19.3M firm plus options) from the Pentagon's new counter-drone task force JIATF-401, the first test of converting reseller-driven sales into direct demand. AV's BlueHalo unit has delivered more than 1,000 Titan RF detect-and-defeat systems and shipped the 540-watt Titan 4 days after the merger closed in May 2025. Anduril's counter-drone franchise ran from a $250M Pentagon award — chiefly 500 Roadrunner-M interceptors, with Pulsar EW included — to the first task order on the Army's new $20B-ceiling enterprise contract vehicle. The primes hold the accreditation slots: CACI's CORIAN was one of only three fixed-site systems DoD's Joint C-sUAS Office selected, and L3Harris pushed VAMPIRE into high-volume production in Huntsville this March, adding a Killcode jamming variant. The flywheel is simple: every fielded sensor logs new emitters into the vendor's threat library, every software update ships as a subscription, and every accreditation cycle takes a challenger years to re-run.

What breaks it

The threat going RF-silent. Ukraine's fiber-optic FPVs and inertial terminal guidance defeat RF detection and jamming simultaneously, re-anchoring the kill chain on radar/EO/IR fusion and one-to-many effectors. That is the wedge for Epirus' Leonidas high-power microwave — $43.5M from the Army for Gen II IFPC-HPM systems — and for the scramble to fuse video with RF. A challenger does not out-jam Titan or DroneGun; it makes jamming optional. The second vector is commoditization: software-defined radios are cheap, and if the Army's Anduril-run vehicle pulls integration value up to the C2 layer, standalone sensor makers risk becoming component suppliers on someone else's data plane.

What forces the reprice

Three events inside 120 days. AV reports FY26 in late June (aggregators show June 29–30; the company hasn't confirmed) — the first full-year guide built around Titan and LOCUST. DroneShield's half-year lands around August 26 and tests whether direct-DoD awards make the pure-play a compounder rather than a contract lottery — a test it enters under a genuine governance overhang: an ASIC probe and boardroom reshuffle have knocked the stock down sharply over the past month, and the print has to outrun both. And the FY27 NDAA — HASC marked up June 4, SASC June 8-10 — is writing dedicated counter-UAS funding lines just as JIATF-401 centralizes procurement authority. The asymmetry: this chokepoint is priced at roughly zero inside $40-200B-cap primes, while the liquid pure-ish plays (DRSHF, AVAV) reprice on every order. When conference text hardens the funding line this fall, the bundled exposure gets unbundled.