In recent years, AeroVironment’s Switchblade loitering munition has become a critical weapon in Ukraine and played a growing role in multiple nations’ arsenals.

Now, AeroVironment is preparing to expand its ability to produce the Switchblade and is working on new ways to launch and control it — including from an MQ-9 Reaper drone.

Brian Young, the AeroVironment executive who oversees the Switchblade program, said Monday the company wants to be ready as the U.S. Army accelerates its own loitering munitions capability through the Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance, or LASSO, program.

“You’re going to see a lot of shift toward that [LASSO] program in terms of the technologies, and then also the scale,” Young, AeroVironment’s vice president of loitering munitions, said at the

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