Pentagon Wants $54 Billion For Drones (arstechnica.com) 64
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US military's massive $1.5 trillion budget request for the next fiscal year includes what Pentagon officials described as the largest investment in drone warfare and counter-drone technology in US history. The proposed spending on drone and autonomous warfare technologies within the FY2027 budget proposal for the US Department of Defense would surpass most countries' defense budgets and rank among the top 10 in the world for military spending, ahead of countries such as Ukraine, South Korea, and Israel.
Specifically, the Pentagon is requesting $53.6 billion to boost US production and procurement of drones, train drone operators, build out a logistics network for sustaining drone deployments, and expand counter-drone systems to defend more US military sites. The funding request is budgeted under the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG), an organization established in late 2025 that would see a massive budget increase after receiving about $226 million in the 2026 fiscal year budget.
[...] Another $20.6 billion would help purchase one-way attack drones and drone aircraft developed through the US Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which is building drone prototypes capable of teaming up with human-piloted fighter jets. Part of this funding would also go toward defensive systems for countering small drones and the US Navy's Boeing MQ-25 drone designed to perform midair refueling of carrier-borne fighter aircraft to extend their strike ranges. Such drone-related spending even rivals the entire budget of the US Marine Corps. But the Pentagon has not said that it is creating a dedicated drone branch of the US military similar to the standalone Space Force.
Pentagon officials emphasized that most of the money would go toward procuring drone and autonomous warfare technologies that already exist, and is largely separate from additional funding that would bolster US domestic manufacturing capacity to build such weapon systems. "That $70 billion is all going into existing systems and technologies," said Hurst. "The industrial base support is entirely separate." "The evolution we've seen in the battlefield is this evolution of technologies in the timeframe of weeks, not the typical years we see with our defense production," said Lt. Gen. Steven Whitney, director of force structure, resources, and assessment for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Pentagon press briefing. "So it's really critical we work with industry to get that capability fielded."
Specifically, the Pentagon is requesting $53.6 billion to boost US production and procurement of drones, train drone operators, build out a logistics network for sustaining drone deployments, and expand counter-drone systems to defend more US military sites. The funding request is budgeted under the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG), an organization established in late 2025 that would see a massive budget increase after receiving about $226 million in the 2026 fiscal year budget.
[...] Another $20.6 billion would help purchase one-way attack drones and drone aircraft developed through the US Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which is building drone prototypes capable of teaming up with human-piloted fighter jets. Part of this funding would also go toward defensive systems for countering small drones and the US Navy's Boeing MQ-25 drone designed to perform midair refueling of carrier-borne fighter aircraft to extend their strike ranges. Such drone-related spending even rivals the entire budget of the US Marine Corps. But the Pentagon has not said that it is creating a dedicated drone branch of the US military similar to the standalone Space Force.
Pentagon officials emphasized that most of the money would go toward procuring drone and autonomous warfare technologies that already exist, and is largely separate from additional funding that would bolster US domestic manufacturing capacity to build such weapon systems. "That $70 billion is all going into existing systems and technologies," said Hurst. "The industrial base support is entirely separate." "The evolution we've seen in the battlefield is this evolution of technologies in the timeframe of weeks, not the typical years we see with our defense production," said Lt. Gen. Steven Whitney, director of force structure, resources, and assessment for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Pentagon press briefing. "So it's really critical we work with industry to get that capability fielded."
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The difference is that they are getting their toys and you will not.
Missing the point of cheap (Score:2)
At least that's the joke I'm looking for. The problem with "asymmetric warfare" is that the enemy can make you win just by spending too much on your responses to their cheap weapons.
Getting out of the area for possible funny, but the attacker's advantage is control over the time and place of battle...
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Such a bad mistake I'd use a delete on it if I could...
s/make you win/make you lose/
Some kind of editorial vacation there?
Healthcare? No. Welfare? No. Social Services? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Better ways to kill people that only differ from us in placement on this muddy rock we inhabit? HELL TO THE YEAH!
What a fucked up set of priorities we have.
Re: Healthcare? No. Welfare? No. Social Services? (Score:2)
Yup.
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The federal budget is spent a lot more on medicare and social security than the military.
However the real problem here is that everything i listed above is just funneling money to very few monopolies that don't do a good job at all.
They're not shit because it lacks money, they're shit because they're mega monopolies that can freely control the price of everything, and you end up with a bad service.
It's more a problem of serving the corporations too much, rather than a problem of budget allocation.
Bullshit (Score:2, Informative)
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Re:Healthcare? No. Welfare? No. Social Services? N (Score:5, Insightful)
Drones are the only way Ukraine is able to defend itself against the numerically superior russian army that is invading.
Yes, defending your land against invaders that torture & kill civilians and bomb children is a priority.
I would also like you to protest with the same energy the immense build-up of weapons and invasion ships that communist China has accumulated. If you live in the US, you're going to witness it ... rather soon.
Re: Healthcare? No. Welfare? No. Social Services? (Score:2)
China will leave us alone if we let them rule the South China Sea and other regions close to them. But as a fellow imperialist country we are going to send forces thousands of miles away from our own borders just to start a war with China.
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China will leave us alone if we let them rule the South China Sea and other regions close to them. But as a fellow imperialist country we are going to send forces thousands of miles away from our own borders just to start a war with China.
Sure, after Benjamin Netanyahu convinces Trump it will be another cake walk ... /s
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China will leave us alone if we let them rule the South China Sea and other regions close to them.
... and allow them to continue to dominate exports, renewable energy, critical minerals, EVs, robotics, and maritime shipping ... and stop messing with their oil imports ...
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But they are drones built on a shoestring budget with 3D printers [dronexl.co], which the large corporations of the rich nations [reuters.com] despise.
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Drones are the only way Ukraine is able to defend itself against the numerically superior Russian army that is invading.
And I'm betting Ukraine does this for a lot less than $54 billion.
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This. Anduril is already a day late and about $10 billion short. Go to Ukraine, make a deal to trade some of the expensive US-weapons that they need for some air defense scenarios, and get a zillion anti-drone weapons in return. Battlefield tested. Complete no-brainer unless the goal is to funnel billions to various military industrial complex firms....old money ones and new money ones.
Also where does the other $1.5 trillion in defense spending going? More littoral combat ships? More nukes? Let's
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I imagine the new trump ship, I forget if he wants a new battleship or carrier in his namesake, is likely to eat way more than 42B. Probably more like 420B. All hail donald.
Knowing Trump, he'll insist it costs exactly $47 billion - with 47 days of testing/training (like with his ICE agents). :-)
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Well, can you name one here in recent history?
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Imagine (Score:1)
The sort of shit you could fix with $1 554 000 000 000.00 around your own streets. Walking down Ocean drive in Miami Beach 4-5 black dudes (one with a monkey on his shoulder) ask me calmly in passing "want some coke" or somesuch. Chillin on the beach a guy walks around offering cheap joints with various kinds of weed and assorted other chemicals. And the place is brimming with police! Your country is rotten to the core.
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Bullshit, psychotic coke episodes, theft, and many other forms of personal and property destruction are very external to the user. That's where the libertarian point of view ends.
It forces us to mind their business because it often ends up interfering with ours.
You want a "mind your own business" drug? stick to pot.
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The problem is that coke is illegal. So we've driven it underground and now we've doubled the problem - we still have coke users, and on top of that we now have a black market.
And society is so shit that everybody's looking for some form of escape, and most are too unimaginative to come up with a non-drug escape, which drives demand for those drugs that are only available on the black market. Somehow, I'm sure this is the Throat Goat's [thebrag.com] fault. (Reagan, not Madonna.)
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4-5 black dudes (one with a monkey on his shoulder) ask me calmly in passing "want some coke"
That's Black marketing...
Just get rid of a tax break or two (Score:2)
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Drones can replace a lot of very expensive military gears.
They're sadly the future of the war, a bunch of buzzing until a side is dead.
No more large scale soldiers, No more tanks, no more jets (other than stealth bombers that probably will be retrofitted as stealth drone droppers), just a plague of cheaply manufactured, gun carrying flying buzzers.
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Just wait a few years until they transform to a gray goo. No buzz, just a slurping sound.
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Drones can replace a lot of very expensive military gears.
The problem is, the US Pentagon and the souse currently heading it haven't really figured it out. Yes, they want drones... but what they want are ridiculously expensive drones, the kind that cost a couple million dollars per unit. That's the kind of "drones" in the US arsenal right now.
If we actually did get into a modern, full-blown drone war with a country like China, they'd just have to bankrupt us into submission. They'd be fielding drones that cost 100x-1000x less per unit than what we'd be putting on
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There's also the lack of rare earths problem, so making high density magnets becomes a supply constraint.
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There's also the lack of rare earths problem, so making high density magnets becomes a supply constraint.
We can make motors without any permanent magnets just fine, the problem is that they require more complex control circuitry and our IC production is in the toilet.
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Sounds like plenty of fat to trim from the military budget then. You sold me!
They need to shake things up first (Score:3)
$54B to traditional MIC companies is a hard sell. They should instead drop a few billion in purchases and R&D grants on Anduril to see if they can really scale up as hoped. Anduril's approach is a lot more like China and Iran where they don't rely on fancy Western style MIC manufacturing and build platforms that are designed to be constructed with civilian manufacturing facilities.
That's why Iran is such a menace to Ukraine, Israel and the US. They can build loads of dirt cheap suicide drones that are plenty good enough to soak up our interceptors and swarm on our installations afterward.
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Buy the anti-drone drones from Ukraine. They already know how to make them, and could use with the money.
It's almost like the U.S. military completely ignored that Russia gets all its drones from Iran, and now we're shooting down $20k drones with $3 million missiles.
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This ^^^^
And we've had years to watch Ukraine War playout. If the current administration didn't have such a stick up their #%!$ about Ukraine and Zelensky such a deal would have been well underway.
Instead we have Russia making waaay more oil blood money due to increase oil prices due to economically unbalanced fight of expensive US weapons against Iran woodframed drones
Also seems like Iran can shut down the strait and they don't even need or have an aircraft carrier battlegroup. Asynchronous indeed.
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If the current administration didn't have such a stick up their #%!$ about Ukraine and Zelensky
It's more a love / bromance / fealty to Putin. Except Trump can only go so far directly doing what Putin wants, before it's too obvious. Of course, it's already obvious to anyone who doesn't suffer from TDS, but we don't matter.
Probably a good investment (Score:1)
Cost plus basis? (Score:3)
I heard somewhere that the US MIC runs on a cost plus basis which motivates them to inflate the cost massively. Hence the manual assembly of interceptors and other missiles.
Can anyone confirm or deny this?
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Another problem is, electronic parts are tested after installation: That takes much more time than an install-only step like a fuel bladder. So one construction station takes 20 minutes, another 2 hours. You can't send a robot home when it's finished installing a fuel blad
Makes sense (Score:3)
Billions for Drones is a good investment - as long as we are getting millions of them. If that is the cost of 1 drone, then no.
But it should also involve a decrease elsewhere. Cut the ridiculously stupid battleship and replace it with a Drone carrier.
Known Problem (Score:2)
Several news outlets have reported on this in some fashion very recently.
The U.S. military has spent billions of dollars on very high tech weaponry, but they don't have enough of them for a sustained war, and they don't have enough good mid-grade stuff to compliment for a sustained war. The hubris is evident; the U.S. will quickly win wars with high tech weapons.
e.g. If the U.S. has 10,000 99.999% accurate anti-drone missiles that cost $100,000 each but Iran has 20,000 drones costing $20,000 each, who has
Re:Known Problem (Score:4, Funny)
e.g. If the U.S. has 10,000 99.999% accurate anti-drone missiles that cost $100,000 each but Iran has 20,000 drones costing $20,000 each, who has the advantage?
The answer is obvious: the manufacturer of the US's expensive missiles.
The grift must go on! (Score:2)
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Don Jr. and Eric are heavily invested in drone companies. They need their grift money too.
This is true, but it is also true that the US military pivoting towards drones is a necessary step for maintaining effective military forces. The world is not a peaceful place, and a lot of that is because of the United States - but not all of it.
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fine, but why additional money? if we are pivoting, then stop funding what ever we are pivoting from...
The pentagon finally noticed! (Score:4, Informative)
The drone war in Ukraine has rearranged the tactics much like the machine gun did in WW I. Infantry is hunted down by drones that fly through open doors and windows. Armor is mobbed by multiple drones that eventual break something important.
Drones have deleted the Russian Black Sea fleet.
The U.S. Navy so far fought off the drones burning through large numbers of very expensive missiles that can not be replaced all that quickly. On top of that the destroyers have to return to a safe port to reload the vertical launch systems. The destroyer tenders that used to exist for such purposes were all scrapped decades ago.
The military has discovered once again it's ready to fight the previous war.
Asymmetric warfare going to the next level (Score:2)
This is US' answer to asymmetric warfare. US is going to spend $54 Billion (this is before budget revisions) to make a $5 million drone. You send one of these towards the enemy's $2000 decoy and they laugh their asses out. Or you use one of these to intercept their $200 dummy drone, the enemy laughs their pants out.
A little late to the party (Score:2)
Why does it seem the Pentagon is just now waking up after being startled by the events of the last month?
scale (Score:2)
56.3 Billion is 3.75% of the 1,500 Billion military budget. 4% of our proposed military budget is MORE THAN MOST COUNTRIES ENTIRE DEFENSE BUDGET, and would be among the top 10 military budgets in the world on its own.
WTF is wrong
Kick backs (Score:2)
Why do you think they have never passed an audit.
surpass most defense budgets...(such as) Israel (Score:1)
pig-trough (Score:2)
What happens to it: Is it the usual Republican trick of giving managers a pay bonus, instead of buying the tools actually needed?
NOPE Ukraine is spending $1000/drone (Score:2)
The brilliance of cheap drones is you can swarm them, overwhelming defenses, getting way more bang for your buck - literally. Say no to massive military budgets. Make the Pentagon balance their books first, and account for every red cent.