Pentagon to Arm Warfighters with ‘Made in America’ Low-Cost Drones

The less than satisfactory performance of  high cost U.S. made drones in the Ukraine conflict and the success of small, inexpensive UAVs there has forced the Pentagon to  eliminate unnecessary policies and bureaucracy in the procurement of low-cost drones.

"In line with President Trump's recent executive order to support the American drone industry, [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth signed a memo removing restrictive policies on drone innovation that hindered production and access to vital technologies," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video.

"By leveraging our department's savings from [the Department of Government Efficiency], we will help power a technological leapfrog and bolster the U.S. drone industry by approving hundreds of made-in-America drone products for purchase by our military."

According to Hegseth, the department's new focus on the use of drone technology involves three primary efforts.

First is to strengthen the U.S. drone manufacturing base. "We will bolster the nascent U.S. drone manufacturing base by approving hundreds of American products for purchase by our military," Hegseth said. "Leveraging private capital flows that support this industry, our overt preference is to buy American."

Second is to get the best tools America has to offer into the hands of the service members who need them most.

"We will power a technological leapfrog, arming our combat units with a variety of low-cost drones made by America's world-leading engineers and [artificial intelligence] experts," Hegseth said.

The department will also ensure those combat units don't just have drones available to them, but that they are also well-trained on how to use them.

"We'll train as we expect to fight. To simulate the modern battlefield, senior officers must overcome the bureaucracy's instinctive risk-aversion on everything from budgeting to weaponizing and training," Hegseth said. "Next year, I expect to see this capability integrated into all relevant combat training, including force-on-force drone wars."