Next big arms race: Who can build the most drones nobody minds losing, America, Russia or China?

Time of India

15-07-2025

The Pentagon is tearing up its old drone playbook. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wants drones treated like bullets, not aircraft. Cheap, expendable, and everywhere. His new memo kills red tape, hands buying power to frontline commanders, and backs US-made drones over imports. Every squad will get its own drone swarm by 2027. It's a bet that the next big fight will be won not by high-end jets, but by millions of low-cost flying munitions buzzing over the battlefield.
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From theory to trenches
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Fighting with drones like ammunition
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wants drones to be seen for what they've really become: disposable munitions, not prized aircraft. This shift, spelled out in a sweeping new Pentagon memo, could reshape how the United States fights, builds, and trains for war for decades to come.Hegseth's order tears up the old playbook that slowed drone development with paperwork, endless sign-offs, and tangled chains of command. His message is blunt: the enemy is churning out millions of cheap drones every year — Russia alone aims for four million this year, Ukraine even more. Meanwhile, US frontline units have been forced to make do with decades-old procurement systems designed for F-35s, not quadcopters.So, the Pentagon is flipping the table. Under the new rules, small drones — Group 1 and Group 2 in Pentagon-speak — are reclassified as consumables. Think hand grenades, not stealth bombers. Commanders at the O-6 level — colonels, captains, equivalents — now have the green light to buy, test, modify and deploy these drones directly, no more waiting for approval from the top brass or the distant bureaucracy.At the core of this pivot is an industrial push. 'Our overt preference is to Buy American,' Hegseth insisted. That means direct loans, advance purchase deals, and fast-track approvals for homegrown drone makers. The goal? A home-grown swarm of cheap, clever drones designed by American engineers and AI experts. Not one or two prototypes , but millions.The overhaul rests on three pillars. First, expand domestic production. Hegseth wants American drones built by American companies. The memo demands the Pentagon lean hard on domestic suppliers, using direct loans, advance purchases and private capital to flood the force with cheap, expendable drones.'Our overt preference is to Buy American,' Hegseth writes. '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 AI experts.'Second, he wants process reform. Building drone dominance isn't just about tech — it's about speed. Past rules treated small drones like fighter jets, bogging them down with the same airworthiness certifications and NATO standards meant for billion-dollar aircraft. From now on, small drones won't need the same testing. They'll be made, modified and lost in combat — and replaced just as fast.'Drone dominance is a process race as much as a technological race,' Hegseth writes. The new approach fuses frontline needs with the factory floor. Prototypes, 3D printing, battlefield tweaks — all encouraged.Hegseth wants the entire procurement model flipped. 'Drone dominance is a process race as much as a technological race,' he wrote. New drones will skip heavy NATO standards when they make no sense for cheap flying bombs. No more forcing small drones to meet the same paperwork as big jets.The third pillar is training. By the end of 2026, every US Army squad must have one-way attack drones in its kit. By 2027, major training events must include drones, swarm scenarios, live-fire tests, drone-vs-drone battles. Senior officers are under orders to strip away range restrictions, expand testing grounds, and make drone use second nature.'Lethality will not be hindered by self-imposed restrictions,' Hegseth said last week. 'Drone technology is advancing so rapidly, our major risk is risk-avoidance. The Department's bureaucratic gloves are coming off.'This pivot isn't academic. In Ukraine, drones have turned trench warfare into a tech race. Cheap first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drones drop grenades through tank hatches. Commercial quadcopters spot artillery targets. More than 70 percent of Ukraine's battlefield casualties this year are linked to drones.Meanwhile, in the Pacific, the US faces China's vast manufacturing might. Chinese drone makers dominate the global civilian market — and parts of the military supply chain too. That's a vulnerability Washington wants closed fast.The memo spells this out. Every military branch must stand up new units, dedicated to getting drones out of PowerPoint slides and into soldiers' hands. These units will test designs, tweak them with 3D printers, feed lessons back to manufacturers and scale up production. Indo-Pacific Command gets first dibs — the clear signal is that the US is preparing to counter China's mass.There's also a nod to the Replicator Initiative, launched in 2023 to push thousands of cheap, smart drones to the front lines. Progress has been slow. Hegseth's memo basically tells everyone: move faster.All this ambition depends on supply. Ukraine's small shops now churn out 200,000 drones a month. The US doesn't yet have that kind of industrial muscle for disposable drones. The memo leans heavily on private capital and domestic startups. Executive Order 14307, signed by Trump in June, aims to open more funding taps.But getting from high-level memo to warehouse shelves won't be easy. American drone makers will need parts, batteries, secure supply chains — and they'll need to do it without relying on Chinese subcomponents. The Pentagon has been burned before by drones carrying suspect Chinese electronics.The new policy also blows open the way for improvisation. Frontline troops will be free to mod small drones on site, even build them from scratch if they have the right parts. The memo specifically allows military-made drones that meet the 'Blue List' of trusted components to skip lengthy certification.The bigger shift is cultural. For decades, the Pentagon treated UAVs as scarce, expensive assets. This new vision says drones are bullets with wings — use them, lose them, reload.There's risk in that mindset. Small drones are easy to jam, easy to shoot down. But the point isn't perfection. The point is mass. If each squad has eyes in the sky, one drone shot down doesn't matter — another is ready.Hegseth's bet is that the Pentagon can out-innovate and out-build its rivals if it gets out of its own way. Time will tell if the factory floor, the training ranges and the dusty frontlines can keep pace with the vision.For now, the message is clear: stop treating drones like prized possessions. Treat them like ammo. Build them cheap, fly them hard, lose them fast — and always have another ready to launch.