Unleashing U.S. military drone dominance

Department of Defense (DOD) Secretary Pete Hegseth says drones are the biggest battlefield innovation for this generation. Unfortunately, China, the U.S.’ top political adversary, has a large chunk of the drone technology market. At the beginning of the summer, President Trump issued an executive order to “unleash American drone dominance”, accelerate testing and enable routine drone operations, scale up domestic production, and expand the export of trusted, American-manufactured drone technologies to global markets.

In Section 9 of the executive order, the President lays out plans to deliver more drones to U.S. warfighters, including updating the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Blue UAS List monthly, which keeps track of approved companies and vendors to use for U.S. military drone production. The executive order also says the Secretary of Defense shall coordinate with the Secretary of Transportation, acting through the Administrator of the FAA to streamline the approval processes to expand access to airspace for conducting UAS training. Finally, the order asks the Secretary of Defense to task the Secretary of each military department to identify programs that would be more cost efficient or lethal if replaced by UAS.

Sec. Hegseth followed up the President’s executive order with a memorandum to rescind what he believed were restrictive policies hindering domestic drone production. The memorandum laid out three goals: prioritizing the purchase of American-made drones and parts with help from industry’s private capital; arming combat units with low-cost drones made by America’s world-leading engineers and artificial intelligence (AI) experts; and training with drones in realistic battlefield scenarios, led by leaders who are not risk averse.

One company ready to supply their drone components to the constructors of military drones is Unusual Machines, featured on page 24 of this issue of Defense and Munitions. Companies don’t need to make completed drones to help fulfill the government’s mission; parts and components are just as important as a completed drone.

“There’s a long and large number of parts that still need to be improved,” Unusual Machines CEO and Director Allan Evans says. “I think we would have failed in our mission set if we went to do drones right now. The need for good, high-quality, low-cost parts is what will enable the drone production.”

More companies will have to step up to make the President’s executive order and Secretary Hegseth’s memorandum a reality and close the gap between the Chinese and American drone manufacturing markets.