By Cal Biesecker | Defense Daily
When it comes to meeting projected demand for its integrated short-range air defense and counter-drone platforms, Leonardo DRS’s Land Systems unit has plenty of capacity and no supplier constraints, the head of the business unit said recently.
That confidence extends out three to five years based on existing procurement strategies and for potentially higher demand, Aaron Hankins, senior vice president and general manager of Leonardo DRS Land Systems, told Defense Daily.
The question of capacity at DRS Land Systems came up during the Leonardo DRS [DRS] third quarter earnings call in October. Bill Lynn, the company’s chairman and CEO, said then that the investment in the new facility in St. Louis four years ago was done to get ahead of the Army’s expanding demand for force protection capabilities, and added that the company is not currently expecting to make further capital expenditures in capacity.
“We’re nowhere close to our capacity constraints based on what we know today,” Hankins said during a recent interview, adding that capacity is “ample” between the St. Louis-area facility and a 100-acre, 500,000 square foot heavy equipment manufacturing site in West Plains, Mo.
The visibility into the Army’s demand and its needs gives DRS Land Systems the insight help its suppliers be prepared to meet current and future demand, Hankins said. Supply chain capacity is not an issue, he said.
The company’s 260,000 square foot facility in Bridgeton is busy integrating counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) equipment on M-ATV vehicles under the Army’s Mobile-Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aircraft Integrated Defeat System, called M-LIDS. For M-LIDS, DRS integrates kinetic, electronic warfare (EW) and related sensor packages on two Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All Terrain Vehicles to defeat Group 1, 2 and 3 drones at short ranges.
DRS is readying to begin integrating the kinetic and EW C-UAS equipment on a Stryker armored wheeled fighting vehicle for the single vehicle M-LIDS configuration. That work will be done in Bridgeton.
The Army in 2023 and 2024 awarded DRS funding to begin acquiring long-lead materials for the first 10 single vehicle M-LIDS, Hankins said. The second award, worth $28.6 million, was made in July and runs through September 2026. Deliveries will begin in 2026.
The Stryker-based M-LIDS, and a new C-UAS Directed Energy (DE) platform that is also integrated into the Stryker, are hallmarks of DRS Land Systems’ approach to rapidly prototyping solutions based on where the Army is going. Using internal investments, including from its partners, DRS Land Systems built an industry team and developed prototypes of both platforms in about eight months, introducing the Stryker M-LIDS in October 2022 and the CUAS DE in October 2024.
As part of the prototyping, DRS conducted its own live-fire testing of the platforms before turning them over to the Army for a customer verification event. The Army this month is conducting a verification event of the CUAS DE at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Once the verification event is finished, Hankins said the company will be able to discuss how the testing went and the next steps.
“We’re trying to find ways to take that five to eight to sometimes 10-year timeline that it takes for the Army to go from idea inception to first unit equipped, you know, try to cut that by half or something,” Hankins said. “So, we’re trying to figure out a way to build right into what the Army has been wanting to try to do for some time, which is to accelerate and be more agile in their in their procurement strategies.”
DRS also does final assembly, test, and delivery of the Mission Equipment Package for the Army’s SGT Stout short-range air defense (SHORAD) platform. Like the single vehicle M-LIDS and CUAS DE, DRS Land Systems went from idea to prototype of the SGT Stout in eight to 10 months.
Formerly called Maneuver-SHORAD, SGT Stout is also based on the General Dynamics [GD]-built Stryker. DRS’s Mission Equipment Package includes the Moog [MOG.A] Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform (RIwP) turret, the XM914 300mm cannon and M240 machine gun, Stinger missiles, and the Multi-Mission Hemispheric Radar supplied by DRS’s Rada unit. Moog subcontracts with DRS Land Systems in West Plains for the manufacture of their RIwP turret.
SGT Stout is designed to take down rotary-wing and fixed-wing threats, cruise missiles, and group 3 drones.
The St. Louis-area site includes about 170,000 square feet under roof and about 90,000 square feet of secure courtyard in the back center of the building. In addition to the M-LIDS and SGT Stout work there, DRS is also assembling small tethered drones for its partner, Hoverfly, and integrated mission system packages for Australian and Canadian light armored vehicles.
DRS Land Systems has five core business areas that include air defense, survivability, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance—typically a suite of sensors installed on a mast and integrated onto wheeled platforms—combat support solutions that include a heavy assault bridge and Patriot missile canisters, and logistics systems, which consists of aircraft cargo loaders and unloaders for the Air Force, and heavy-duty tank trailers.