Winners of the U.S. defense Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft System (C-sUAS) Low-Cost Sensing (LCS) challenge have been announced.
MatrixSpace Inc. was selected as the overall winner and will receive the top award of $500,000. Following the overall winner, the top three performers — Guardian RF, Hidden Level and Teledyne FLIR Defense — will each receive award amounts of $100,000.
The selected systems secured a place among the 10 finalists who advanced to live testing during USNORTHCOM’s Falcon Peak 25.2 exercise, outperforming 115 submissions. The system demonstrated capability in detection, classification, localization, scalability, cost and integration readiness.
Sponsors of the award include Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401), U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
“Small UAS threats are evolving faster than traditional acquisition cycles, and meeting that challenge requires capabilities that can be deployed at speed and scale,” said David Payne, acting director of DIU’s Autonomy Portfolio. “The selected solutions show how commercial innovation can strengthen our layered defense — delivering affordable sensing that we can field widely, adapt quickly, and keep the warfighter ahead of the threat.”
The MatrixSpace platform combines ultra-low SWaP-C radar, AI-driven edge intelligence, and distributed networked CUAS powered by AiCloud. During the evaluation, it successfully detected, tracked and classified every sortie flown —including RF-dark fiber FPVs, commercial drones, and custom-built UAVs.
A scalable, distributed approach to counter-UAS sensing
The LCS challenge, launched in May 2025, was designed to complement existing sensor systems by identifying emerging technologies that enable broad, distributed, and resilient sensing architectures. During FP 25.2, the 10 selected finalists demonstrated solutions spanning radio frequency passive detection, active radar, acoustic sensing, optical and infrared modalities, and hybrid systems.
These technologies collectively showed potential cost savings of 50–80 percent in total cost of ownership, while still meeting key coverage and performance requirements for C-sUAS defense.
During live testing, vendors were evaluated against a variety of small UAS flown both individually and in coordinated multiples, employing diverse communication protocols. Finalists were not informed which platforms or profiles they would be tested against, ensuring performance was measured under realistic, un-scripted, and operationally relevant conditions.
Evaluated by experts and end-users, against a rigorous selection criteria,challenge winners differentiated themselves by demonstrating tailored technical strengths, high performance against threat-representative UAS targets and demonstrating a cost-effective architecture enabling deployment at scale across fixed, mobile, and austere environments.
About the LCS Challenge
The Counter-sUAS Low-Cost Sensing (LCS) challenge sought to identify emerging sensor solutions that could:
- expand detection coverage
- reduce total lifecycle cost
- integrate seamlessly into joint C2 architectures
- provide the resilience and redundancy required to counter small UAS threats.
Launched in May 2025, the challenge drew participation from traditional and nontraditional vendors across the country, representing the full spectrum of sensing modalities. The Falcon Peak 25.2 exercise provided a realistic environment to evaluate these capabilities under operationally relevant conditions.
For more information about DIU’s work accelerating commercial technology into the Department of Defense, visit www.diu.mil.
