Facing a critical production gap against adversaries, the Pentagon is pivoting to high-volume manufacturing, investing $56 billion to field 300,000 low-cost, expendable drones by 2027.
By: Tuva Siegel, Warrior Editorial Fellow
As the United States wages an ongoing conflict with Iran, driven by the recent shootdown of a U.S. MQ-1 drone, the Pentagon continues to accelerate efforts to close its gap in drone production. Military officials say American forces are years behind adversaries who have already made unmanned systems central to modern warfare.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaking at a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore on May 30, announced a $56 billion investment in drone production as part of the 2027 budget, aiming to reach a target of 300,000 drones by 2027, a more defined number compared to Hegseth’s 2025 promise for “tens of thousands of small drones to our force in 2026, and hundreds of thousands of them by 2027." The goal remains to keep pace with Ukraine, which produces between 10,000 and 20,000 drones a day. "We intend to not only be at parity, but the best in the world at it," he said. Now the question remains about what steps the Pentagon is and has been taking to increase drone production and how those measures are relevant to recent Iranian aggression and continued volatility during the ongoing ceasefire. As Hegseth explains, the US continues to learn from Ukraine: “It's not about having the exquisite systems; it's the ability to scale it, scale it quickly while adapting week after week.”
That emphasis on scale is one shared across the Pentagon. In a March 5 testimony before the Committee on Armed Services, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) echoed Hegseth's urgency, emphasizing that "Ukraine has forever changed the character of modern warfare, and demonstrated the growing importance of small unmanned systems." Ukraine has quickly risen to produce the best drones in the world, both in terms of capabilities on the battlefield and, perhaps most notably, their scalability at the manufacturing level. Ukraine pays around $500 to $1,000 for its drones compared to the US’s $10,000, or $30,000 to $40,000 for the Group 1 10-inch unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Additionally, Ukraine has built 4.5 million drones in total and a projected 6 million by the end of the year, making production about 500,000 a month, explains Owen West, senior advisor for Drone Dominance at the Department of Defense. While Ukraine still depends on components from China, similarly to the US, they are working to decrease this dependence to lower supply chain vulnerabilities.
The US’s Group 1 drones weigh less than 20 pounds and have become central in reconnaissance, targeting, and strike missions. However, as Wicker observes, “Both the American commercial drone industry and the Pentagon are years behind the curve in producing and employing drones.” With China capturing almost 90 percent of the global drone market through subsidies, predatory pricing practices, and state-directed control of supply chains, they have effectively driven up American drone costs between 5 and 25 times. In 2025, the Defense Reconciliation Law set aside $2.5 billion to be used specifically to purchase small Group 1 first-person-view (FVP) drones.
Wicker called for the free world to “stop rewarding China's predatory practices in the small drone industry”, citing section 1709 of the fiscal year, which “banned the leading Chinese state-sponsored drone companies from selling in the United States.” So while the US continues to take measures to catch up to the undeniable presence of drones in combat, “the American drone industry is essentially starting from near zero,” said Wicker, which continues to show as urgency for these UAS continues to increase in conflict with Iran.
America used one-way attack drones for the first time in combat in Iran using the Low-cost Unmanned 10 Combat Attack System (Lucas) drone, a reverse-engineered Shahed 136. This drone has been deployed in Operation Epic Fury and has “documented autonomous anti-jamming, and I believe also some swarming capability,” as stated by Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). LUCAS also have “an extensive range and are designed to operate autonomously. They can be launched with different mechanisms to include catapults, rocket-assisted takeoff, and mobile ground and vehicle systems,” according to CENTCOM.
The incorporation of AI is also a pressing question, one that some members believe has not been addressed enough. Questions around target identification, confirmation, reliability, and the extent of human oversight during these processes are becoming increasingly important. Kelly emphasizes that despite obscurity and the classified nature of Lucas, “we take this issue of human-in-the-loop seriously and create the framework that DOD will apply to these systems with regard to their autonomous nature.” The question remains whether the US, starting so late in the race for drone dominance, will come out ahead. particularly as conflict with Iran accelerates pressure to deploy AI-enabled systems before Congress has established any framework for human oversight over autonomous targeting decisions.
The U.S. has committed $1.1 billion to purchase drone systems through a series of competitions. 25 drone vendors will participate in a live evaluation where military officials will score based on ease of use and lethality, with the winning drone then given an order for 30,000. This marks a shift from buying based on what Travis Metz, Drone Dominance program manager at the Department of Defense, described to lawmakers as “paper requirements.” Metz advocated for a more direct and speedy decision-making process made by those who will actually be operating the systems. Metz states, “We have 22 removed the bureaucratic filter,” which seems to be the direction the Pentagon is moving towards closing the production gap and providing funding that officials are requesting, “ensuring that our forces have the quantity of consumable drones required for modern conflict.” However, only two Ukrainian drone companies have been selected for phase 1, raising questions about the U.S.’s commitment to paying attention to Ukraine’s technological feats.
Ukraine does not use drones from the U.S. because they are both too expensive and not technologically advanced enough. Additionally, as Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) emphasizes, “it doesn't feel to me like there is a sense of urgency about what our challenge is.” Ukraine has the urgency of war on its side, driven by intense battlefield necessity, and now, as the U.S. continues to engage in conflict with Iran, some officials, such as Shaheen, are asking whether it is time for that urgency to be felt at the Pentagon. Now, with the U.S. itself in direct conflict with Iran, drone production must shift from a long-term procurement problem to an immediate crisis.
“Israel has conducted thousands of strikes against Iran, including the deployment of hundreds of one-way attack drones. Iran has retaliated with strikes across the region, including its own drone attacks that have resulted in American casualties. The data from Ukraine is even more sobering; more than half of all casualties on the battlefield are now attributed to UAS,” explains Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.). When asked if drones were planned to be used in the war with Ukraine, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) indicated they would be vastly allocated to training exercises rather than live combat. As Iranian drones continue to test American defenses, the Pentagon's answer may ultimately depend on whether it can match the urgency that Ukraine and Iran have already demonstrated on the battlefield.
Tuva Siegel is an Editorial Fellow at Warrior Maven. She studies English at Kenyon College. Tuva is the author of Drömland, a fictional collection of short stories, and is currently studying weapons and military technology.