Pentagon Pours Billions Into Drones
The Pentagon’s next budget bets heavily on drones, with tens of billions aimed at building an autonomous force. The push is the right lesson from modern war, and the open question is whether the Pentagon can buy fast enough to matter.The fiscal 2027 request devotes about $54 billion to drone development, a central piece of what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calls a drive for “UAS domain dominance” by 2027.
It sits inside a $1.15 trillion base defense request, among the largest in modern history, that the Senate Armed Services Committee backed when it marked up its version of the policy bill in June.
The same threat runs both ways. Every dollar spent fielding drones has to be matched by dollars to shoot down the enemy’s, and counter-drone defense is the less glamorous, equally urgent side of the same line item.
Why drones. Ukraine settled the argument. Cheap uncrewed systems have destroyed tanks, ships, and aircraft worth orders of magnitude more, and mass and attrition now beat exquisite platforms in the fights the US is most likely to face.
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