Air Force Seeks Fivefold Funding Hike for Mobile Base Defense Tech

The Air Force hopes to snag $836 million next year for rapidly deployable air base defense systems to thwart drones over fixed installations and defend Airmen at austere airfields from enemy missiles.

The projected fivefold funding increase on Air Base Air Defense Systems, or ABADS, in fiscal 2026 is fueled by an influx of money approved by Congress earlier this summer as part of the sweeping Republican-led tax-and-spending package known as the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” The dramatic increase comes as the Pentagon races to protect its forces from the growing slew of drone and missile threats posed by potential adversaries. 

Ukraine’s surprise drone attack on Russian air force bases in June prompted a scramble among senior defense officials to fast-track counter-drone systems for U.S. military installations around the world. Meanwhile, experts have warned that China’s growing arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles could threaten American assets across the Pacific.

“Evolving competitor unmanned aircraft systems … threaten Air Force and Space Force bases, and the possibility of land attack missile use in various forward theaters is a significant and growing challenge,” an Air Force spokesperson said in an emailed statement. 

While the Army is responsible for air base defense across the services, the Air Force “recognizes the need to protect all installations, assets and personnel,” the spokesperson said.

As part of next year’s investment, the Air Force plans to buy two types of base defense technology already in production: the Small Unmanned Aircraft Defense System, or SUADS, as well as a missile defense variant of ABADS. The first relies on a command-and-control system and electronic warfare to detect, track, and defeat small enemy drones. The second, ABADS-MD, uses the Army Long-Range Persistent Surveillance System to detect incoming missiles. A separate tasking system takes out the weapons electronically.

The Air Force in 2021 awarded a 10-year, $953 million contract to Parsons Corp. to develop and build ABADS, according to the company’s website. The Parsons-led team includes Leidos, SAIC and SRC. The service also awarded Lockheed Martin a contract in 2023 to design and build prototypes for the program.

The compact anti-drone systems aim to move forward using $518 million split between the annual budget and one-time funding provided by Congress in the budget reconciliation package earlier this summer. The missile defense version would receive $318 million—$83 million in the base budget, if enacted, plus $235 million already provided through reconciliation. In comparison, the service planned to spend $164 million on the program in fiscal 2025, according to budget documents.

Next year marks the first time the Air Force plans to fund procurement of the “nonkinetic effector” portion of the missile defense system. Air Force officials, citing operational security concerns, would not discuss the nonkinetic component, a Pentagon term used to describe methods of attack without physically striking a target—such as electronic warfare, lasers and microwave technologies. If all goes well, the service plans to award a contract to procure three such systems in May 2026, according to budget documents.

The Air Force began buying the counter-drone version of ABADS in fiscal 2024, ramping up from six SUADS to eight in 2026, the budget request shows. Procurement of the missile defense version began in fiscal 2025 with 11 systems and will jump to 18 next year. 

Masao Dahlgren, a fellow with the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, applauded the budget increase after years of cutting air base defense to fund aircraft modernization instead. Dahlgren pointed to Ukraine’s ability to destroy Russian bombers in Operation Spiderweb as proof that brick-and-mortar installations are already “incredibly vulnerable.”

“I think this kind of work is long overdue,” he said. “Air bases are the center of combat force generation for the Air Force.”

However, he questioned whether nonkinetic effects will be enough to stop incoming attacks. 

ABADS-MD is specifically designed to support the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment, or ACE, strategy of deploying small teams of Airmen to set up temporary airfields in dispersed locations on the battlefield that “might otherwise be unprotected due to joint air and missile defense capacity shortfalls,” the service spokesperson said.

The Army Long-Range Persistent Surveillance System makes the Air Force’s expeditionary missile defense system harder for enemy forces to detect than a typical radar. The ALPS uses passive radio receivers with very low energy signatures to detect incoming missiles by simply collecting the energy coming off the missile. Traditional radars emit their own energy, making them much more vulnerable to attack.

The Air Force’s budget request funds 12 ALPS and three command-and-control systems for the missile defense equipment. ABADS-MD funding would also support U.S. Northern Command and Golden Dome, President Donald Trump’s high-priority initiative to build a missile defense shield over the United States, budget documents show.

For the counter-drone portion of ABADS, 2026 dollars would build a joint, multilayer defensive network to expel small drones at priority Air Force installations through Replicator 2, the Pentagon’s initiative to produce a range of counter-drone systems across air, land, and sea. The anti-drone program has sought to support security for troops assigned to U.S. Africa Command, according to the budget request.

The Defense Innovation Unit, the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office and Northern Command recently launched an effort as part of Replicator 2 to find “low-collateral defeat” capabilities for downing potentially hostile drones like those that flew repeatedly over Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, for more than two weeks in December 2023. The incident drew criticism from lawmakers who questioned why the Air Force was unable to shoot down the offending drones amid a tangle of federal regulations and technological and public safety concerns.

The funding request for ABADS will also be used for a joint network of sensors to form a common picture of small drones in the airspace over the Washington area and protect presidential aircraft from encroaching unmanned aircraft, according to budget documents. 

The Air Force would not discuss long-term fielding plans for ABADS but said the service “expects to field a large number of SUADS,” the spokesperson said. The software for both the counter-drone and missile defense components of ABADS is scheduled for development and testing into 2030, the budget shows.