US Army Lags in Drone Race, Says Colonel
The U.S. and its NATO allies are a 'distant third' behind Ukraine and Russia in integrating small combat drones, according to US Army COL Neil Hollenbeck. In a recent podcast, Hollenbeck blamed bureaucratic drag, stating the Army's modernization process takes 2-3 years to adapt, while Ukraine innovates in weeks by working directly with tech companies. He advocated for a 'unit-centric' model to embed procurement specialists with combat units for rapid development.
The Pentagon is scrambling to close the drone gap with its Replicator Initiative, which aims to field thousands of "all-domain attritable autonomous systems" by August 2025 to counter China's military mass. The initiative's second phase, Replicator 2, is now tackling the urgent need for counter-drone systems following lessons learned from attacks on US forces. A follow-on effort, the Drone Dominance Program (DDP), is investing $1 billion to acquire hundreds of thousands of kamikaze drones by 2028. The program uses a competitive, phased "gauntlet" where vendors are evaluated to rapidly scale production, with an initial goal of 30,000 drones delivered by July 2026. This push is a direct response to the scale seen in Ukraine, where drone production has hit 2 million units in 2024, while Russia has utilized up to 1.4 million aerial drones in a single year. To compete, the US Army launched its "SkyFoundry" pilot program, which aims to domestically mass-produce upwards of 10,000 small drones per month starting in 2026. The conflict has highlighted a massive cost disparity; Ukrainian forces use first-person-view (FPV) drones costing $300-$500 to destroy high-value assets. In contrast, the US Army's tube-launched SwitchBlade 600, part of the LASSO program, costs an estimated $170,000 per round. To accelerate procurement, the Army is launching an "Amazon-like" online marketplace where units can directly purchase vetted drones. This system, inspired by Ukraine's own rapid acquisition models, allows vendors' systems to be continuously evaluated and rated, replacing traditional multi-year procurement cycles. Defense tech startups are playing a central role, with companies like Anduril securing major contracts, including a potential $1 billion deal with SOCOM and a $250 million Pentagon contract for its Roadrunner counter-drone interceptor. Anduril is also a key player in developing the Army's new software-defined command and control systems. On the software front, the Pentagon's Project Maven initiative has been using AI and machine learning since 2017 to help automate the analysis of drone surveillance footage for target identification. While Google initially participated, it withdrew after employee protests, with companies like Palantir and Anduril stepping in to continue development. The technological race is constantly evolving on the battlefield, with both Russia and Ukraine now deploying fiber-optic guided drones. These systems are effectively unjammable as they trail a physical cable back to the operator, a direct countermeasure to the pervasive electronic warfare that can disable radio-frequency-linked drones.
