It looks like a rifle, weighs less than five pounds, and you can teach somebody to work it in under five minutes. Pacific Air Forces wants sixty of them. It does not, at present, have the money to pay for them.

On 8 September 2026, PACAF’s 18th Contracting Squadron published a solicitation for 60 DroneBuster 5 handheld counter-drone jammers, fitted with a GPS-focused add-on kit, to improve the command’s ability to detect and defeat small drones across the Indo-Pacific. Responses were due by 11 September.

Buried in the notice is a line that says a great deal about how American air power is being funded right now: the Air Force states that funds for the contract are not currently available, and that the government has no legal obligation to pay for anything until money is formally allocated and the contracting officer confirms it in writing.

What a DroneBuster actually does

The DroneBuster began life at Flex Force Enterprises in Portland, Oregon. In its basic form it is a directional radio-frequency jammer: you point it at a small drone and it breaks the radio link between the aircraft and whoever is flying it, and it can also jam the GPS signals the drone uses to navigate. Cut both and a cheap quadcopter usually lands, hovers, or flies its lost-link routine somewhere else.

It runs on rechargeable batteries, weighs under five pounds, and gives around three hours of continuous jamming or ten hours of detection on a charge. Flex Force says a new user can learn basic operation in under five minutes — which for a base-defence tool matters more than almost any other specification, because the person holding it is usually not a specialist.

The 5 does something the earlier ones could not

Jamming works beautifully against a drone with a human on the other end of the radio link. It works much less well against a drone flying a pre-programmed route with nobody talking to it — there is no link to break.

That is the gap the DroneBuster 5 is meant to close. According to Flex Force, newer variants can take over a drone’s onboard flight computer rather than simply drowning out its signal, which lets an operator interrupt a GPS-guided aircraft flying autonomously. The company puts the effective distance for that at roughly 800 to 1,400 metres.

That is a manufacturer claim, not an independently verified test result, and it is worth reading it as such. But it describes precisely the threat that has been embarrassing air bases from Ukraine to the Middle East: the small, cheap, autonomous aircraft that does not need a pilot nearby to find a parked jet.

A walkthrough of how the DroneBuster is used against a small drone.

Sixty jammers for an ocean

The 18th Contracting Squadron is Kadena’s, and Kadena is the point. PACAF’s problem is that its aircraft sit on a small number of large, well-known, fixed airfields scattered across the Pacific, most of them within reach of somebody who could put a cheap drone over the fence. Sixty handheld jammers do not solve that. They are the last layer, the one that exists for the drone that got past everything else.

It fits a wider pattern. The Air Force has been pushing to take on more of its own air defence at forward bases, and has separately been shopping for anti-aircraft guns to protect overseas installations against drones and cruise missiles. Handheld jammers are the cheap end of the same argument.

The Air Force has also stood up its first rapidly deployable units built specifically to protect Pacific air bases from aerial attack — small teams of roughly 20 enlisted Airmen drawn from aviation and battle management backgrounds, trained to defend remote airfields against drones.

A device with a complicated corporate history

The company behind it has changed hands more often than the product has changed shape. Flex Force was absorbed into DZYNE Technologies through a series of private equity acquisitions completed in 2024. DZYNE itself was then bought by Ondas Inc. in July 2026 for roughly $875.8 million, and folded into Ondas’s Sentinel autonomous defence business.

Through all of that the DroneBuster has kept the distinction that matters to a contracting officer: the Pentagon’s Joint Counter-UAS Office has designated it the only handheld electronic attack system it has approved for defeating drones. The manufacturer says more than 1,700 units have gone out worldwide, to the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and to a range of international militaries and police forces, including a 2025 contract supplying Australia under its LAND 156 counter-drone programme.

One last detail, for connoisseurs of procurement paperwork. The solicitation carried two corrections. The first because the document referenced the older DroneBuster IV on one page when the requirement is for the 5. The second to clarify that the part number should specify the American 433 MHz variant rather than the European 868 MHz one — a distinction that would have been discovered eventually, but preferably not by pointing the thing at a drone over Okinawa.

Häufig gestellte Fragen

What is a DroneBuster?

The DroneBuster is a handheld radio-frequency jammer, roughly the size and shape of a rifle, used to defeat small drones. It breaks the radio link between a drone and its operator and can also jam the GPS signals the drone uses to navigate. It weighs under 5 lb (2.3 kg), runs on rechargeable batteries, and gives around three hours of continuous jamming or ten hours of drone detection per charge.

How many DroneBusters does the US Air Force want to buy?

Sixty DroneBuster 5 units with a GPS-focused add-on kit, according to a solicitation published by Pacific Air Forces’ 18th Contracting Squadron on 8 September 2026, with responses due by 11 September.

Is the DroneBuster purchase funded?

No. The solicitation states explicitly that funds for the contract are not currently available, and that the government has no legal obligation to pay until money is formally allocated and the contracting officer confirms it in writing.

What can the DroneBuster 5 do that earlier versions could not?

According to Flex Force, newer DroneBuster variants can take over a drone’s onboard flight computer rather than only jamming its signals. That allows an operator to interrupt a GPS-guided drone flying a pre-programmed route with no live operator to jam. The company puts the effective distance for this at roughly 800 to 1,400 metres (2,600 to 4,600 feet). These are manufacturer figures, not independently verified results.

Who makes the DroneBuster?

It was originally developed by Flex Force Enterprises of Portland, Oregon. Flex Force was absorbed into DZYNE Technologies through private equity acquisitions completed in 2024, and DZYNE was itself acquired by Ondas Inc. in July 2026 for roughly $875.8 million, becoming part of Ondas’s Sentinel autonomous defence business.

Is the DroneBuster used by other countries?

Yes. The manufacturer says more than 1,700 units have been delivered worldwide to the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps as well as to international militaries and police agencies. That includes a 2025 contract to supply Australia’s defence force under its LAND 156 counter-drone programme.

Sources: Pacific Air Forces solicitation of 8 September 2026 as reported by The Defence Blog; Flex Force Enterprises product material; Joint Counter-UAS Office designations; Ondas Inc. announcements; VOA News; Air & Space Forces Magazine.