The Army’s fiscal year 2026 unfunded priorities list, a previously unreported document obtained by Inside Defense, details 37 individual unmet needs the service would like Congress to consider funding, highlighting the Patriot missile system, the Coyote counter-drone system, the Precision Strike Missile and a host of others.
The first unfunded item on the list, which is marked “controlled unclassified information,” is “Patriot Modification” for $173.6 million, followed by “PAC-3 Organic Industrial Base (OIB) for Missile/Interceptor Repair & Recertification” for $300 million.
The third item is the Coyote counter-small unmanned aerial system missile effector, which is used to destroy small drones, for $207 million.
The Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, is the fourth unfunded item at $324 million, followed by $125 million in research and development for “Alternative Supplier Long-Range Munitions.”
Further down the list at No. 7, the Army identifies an unfunded need of $406 million for the Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO), which is a “man-portable, tube-launched, lethal payload munition, unmanned aerial system.”
The Army also has an unmet need of $643 million for its Future Long Range Aircraft (FLRAA), though that item is No. 24 on the list.
Other big-ticket items include $197 million for sUAS “Sky Foundry Manufacturing Capability,” $177.5 million for counter-sUAS operations, $118 million for Integrated Battle Command System software development and integration.
The Army’s total UPL amounts to $4.3 billion, which is about twice as much as the service identified last year.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, in a recent memo to senior lawmakers, said the service’s UPL should only be supported if “additive funding is available” and not seen as an effort to “displace anything in the already requested” fiscal year 2026 budget.
George’s memo highlighted the need to procure small drones and field appropriate countermeasures as that area of warfare is “changing faster than our budget process can react.”
Originally published Inside Defense
