Pentagon to Order 30,000 Kamikaze Drones
The Pentagon is preparing to order 30,000 one-way attack drones in the coming days, a massive scaling of its autonomous systems procurement. The move follows recent "Gauntlet" unmanned exercises, with the winning vendors' systems expected to be fielded across military units within just five months. This signals a major strategic shift toward expendable, AI-enabled drones for both intelligence and kinetic roles.
This procurement is the first tranche of the broader Drone Dominance Program, an initiative aimed at rapidly fielding hundreds of thousands of low-cost, one-way attack drones by 2027. The program, championed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, intends to drive down unit prices while scaling production by using competitive, iterative acquisition cycles measured in months, not years. The total budget for the program is approximately $1.1 billion over four phases. The "Gauntlet" exercises, which concluded in early March 2026 at Fort Benning, Georgia, involved 25 vendors competing for the initial $150 million in orders. During the trials, around 100 military operators, primarily from the Army, Marine Corps, and special operations, evaluated the drones in simulated combat scenarios, such as striking a target 10 kilometers away. Each operator was given only two hours of training per system to assess ease of use. This rapid acquisition strategy is a direct response to the battlefield effectiveness of small, expendable drones observed in the Ukraine conflict and is designed to counter China's dominance in the commercial drone market. The Drone Dominance Program is part of a larger strategic effort, the Replicator initiative, which was launched in August 2023 to field thousands of "attritable" autonomous systems across multiple domains to counter the sheer mass of China's military. The 25 companies selected to compete in the first "Gauntlet" included a mix of startups and established defense contractors, such as Kratos SRE and Teal Drones, as well as specialized firms like Performance Drone Works and Auterion Government Solutions. Notably, two Ukrainian companies, General Cherry Corp and Ukrainian Defense Drones Tech Corp, were also invited to participate, bringing their extensive real-world combat experience to the competition. The program's subsequent phases will narrow the number of vendors and increase order quantities, with a target of reducing the cost per drone from an initial $5,000 to $2,300. This approach is intended to build a secure and scalable domestic manufacturing base for small unmanned aerial systems, a sector currently dominated by Chinese companies like DJI. The focus on autonomous and attritable systems reflects a significant shift in U.S. military strategy, leveraging AI-driven capabilities for kinetic strikes and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). Companies like Anduril and Skydio are key players in this space, developing AI-powered software platforms and autonomous drones for various military applications, from base defense to counter-drone systems. The Pentagon's "Blue UAS" list identifies drones that meet stringent cybersecurity and supply-chain requirements, further guiding procurement toward trusted, American-made systems.
