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The U.S. Army has established three permanent counter-drone test lanes at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona: one for detection, one for electronic defeat such as jamming, and one for kinetic weapons that physically engage drones. The lanes were used in September 2026 during Falcon Peak 26.2, an experiment that modeled drone incursions in southern-border desert conditions.

What the Army’s three anti-drone test lanes evaluate

The lanes divide counter-unmanned aircraft systems (counter-UAS) testing into three parts of the engagement chain. A drone must first be found and tracked; a response may then disrupt or take control of it electronically, or physically shoot it down.

Detection

Detection testing covers sensors that find and track small drones. Relevant questions include whether a system can identify a target and maintain a useful track, but public reporting on Falcon Peak 26.2 does not provide detection ranges or comparative track-quality results.

Electronic defeat

Electronic-defeat systems can jam drone communications or, in some cases, take control of a drone. These are distinct outcomes: disrupting a link is not the same as assuming control. The public account does not report which electronic systems were tested or how they performed.

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Kinetic defeat

Kinetic systems use weapons to physically engage a drone. The Army’s broader counter-UAS work also includes portable systems intended to detect, jam or destroy potential enemy aircraft, as illustrated by Project Flytrap. That context does not establish which portable systems were present at Falcon Peak.

Where and under what scenario the lanes were used

The permanent lanes are at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. Joint Interagency Task Force 401 conducted Falcon Peak 26.2 in September 2026 in support of U.S. Northern Command and Joint Task Force Southern Border. The event modeled drone incursions in desert conditions associated with the U.S. southern border; it was described as the first Falcon Peak event to use that setting.

Yuma’s lanes are intended to remain available for continuing tests involving the Department of War, military units, industry and defense partners. Their permanent status makes repeated evaluation at the same test venue possible, rather than limiting the effort to a one-time demonstration.

How common standards could make comparisons more useful

Hi-Sing Silen, the task force’s test integrator, said the range is standardizing the specification sheet for each lane to establish shared measurement standards and a common baseline. That matters because a vendor demonstration can depend heavily on its chosen conditions; agreed test specifications can make results from different systems more comparable.

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For meaningful comparisons, the measures need to fit the job being tested. Detection systems can be assessed on range and track quality; electronic-defeat systems on disruption, selectivity and recovery behavior; and kinetic systems on engagement speed, hit probability and controls against unintended effects. Interoperability also matters across all three lanes: a sensor’s track must be usable by command-and-control software and, where appropriate, a weapon.

Standardizing a test framework does not by itself establish that systems have been tested under identical conditions, nor does it reveal which system is best. The public reporting does not publish the lane specifications, statistical results or a vendor-by-vendor scorecard.

What Anduril Lattice did in the evaluation

Falcon Peak 26.2 was the first Yuma test event to use Anduril’s Lattice autonomous command-and-control software as the baseline for commercial sensor-to-shooter evaluation. Radars, cameras and weapons were assessed on how they connected to a common system that tracks drones and assigns them to an appropriate weapon.

David Bates, a capability integrator in Yuma Proving Ground’s Air Combat Systems Directorate, described Yuma as Lattice’s first deployment for test and evaluation and said the event generated lessons about test and evaluation. This establishes Lattice’s role as the event’s integration baseline; it does not show that every participating system connected successfully or disclose how well any pairing performed.

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Which companies and systems are publicly identified?

Public reporting does not identify every participating company or provide comparative results. It names Allen Control Systems’ Bullfrog robotic gun turret as a specific example: the turret was photographed firing at drone targets on September 9. That image does not establish that Bullfrog won the exercise, was the only kinetic system tested or represented the full vendor field.

As a result, readers can identify one photographed system, but cannot use the available account to rank vendors or determine which sensors, electronic-warfare tools or weapons met the Army’s standards.

What the permanent lanes change—and what remains unknown

The lanes provide recurring infrastructure for testing the connected counter-drone chain under realistic scenarios: detect a target, decide how to respond, and deliver an electronic or kinetic effect. A shared measurement approach and software integration baseline could help expose problems that a standalone equipment demonstration would miss, especially whether different components can work together.

The publicly described effort is an evaluation framework, not a published assessment of operational readiness. The results needed to judge individual systems—including exact test specifications, performance figures and full participant lists—have not been disclosed.

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