U.S. War Department to Allocate $1 Billion for "Cheap" Attack Drones

The U.S. War Department has requested information to gauge industry's willingness and ability to make some 300,000 drones quickly and inexpensively.

The request for information released to industry this week spells out a plan that'll begin early next year, when the department will, over the course of two years, and within four phases, offer $1 billion to industry to build a large number of small unmanned aerial systems capable of conducting one-way attack missions, a Department of War (DoW) release said.

The first of those four phases, called "gauntlets," runs from February to July 2026. During that time, 12 vendors will be asked to collectively produce 30,000 drones at a cost of $5,000 per unit, for a total of $150 million in department outlays.

Over the course of the next three gauntlets, the number of vendors will go down from 12 to five, the number of drones ordered will increase from 30,000 to 150,000, and the price per drone will drop from $5,000 to $2,300.

"Drone dominance will do two things: drive costs down and capabilities up," Secretry of War Pete Hegseth said. "We will deliver tens of thousands of small drones to our force in 2026, and hundreds of thousands of them by 2027."

Through the drone dominance program, $1 billion from President Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" will fund the manufacture of approximately 340,000 small UASs for combat units over the course of two years.

After that, it's expected that American industry's interest in building drones as a result of the program will have strengthened supply chains and manufacturing capacity to the point that the military will be able to afford to buy the drones it wants, in the quantity it wants, at a price it wants, through regular budgeting.

Equipment is only part of the game, the secretary said. Doctrine — how the warfighter fights — is also critical.

Following the end of the Cold War, Hegseth said, U.S. defense spending dropped precipitously, and as a result, there was also a consolidation of defense contractors from hundreds to just dozens. The department, he said, budgeted for quality rather than quantity — and for 30 years got what it needed.