Ann: February 2024 Investor Presentation, page-65

Yes I think this is likely true. There are no material sales associated to this initiative and the R&D spend could end up like Apples EV.

I try not to get excited by announcements outside of quarterly fact based updates or sales but this latest one certainly sounds very cool. I've often felt that the anti-drone solution for soldiers needs to be light & small, given how much kit they're wearing so lets hope our brilliant team of engineers can crack the problem. Upside will be potential for armies to equip ever soldier or at least every squad will need one. I expect we are looking for a successor to the RfPatrol Mk2.
Counterdrone (C-UAS) Protection - RfPatrol — DroneShield

NAPKIN MATH AHEAD - SPECULATIVE AND 99.9% USELESS
Assuming USA army figures of 1.3m soldiers, divide this into squads of 8 you get 162,500.
If we produce a viable battle-tested detection capability that becomes essentially to a squads kit then if we sell the units a $1,000 a pop we're looking at a product worth up to $162m in sales + (more importantly) ARR through software updates.

For more conservative numbers you could take 160,000 troops on deployment (20,000 squads)

We're putting over 50% of our staff onto this problem so i'd expect the potential sales to be significant to justify this action.