The War Department is treating small, one-way attack drones less like boutique weapons and more like ammunition, and it is doing so at a scale that resembles a draft for machines. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has effectively run a mock mobilization for industry, tasking a slate of manufacturers to field tens of thousands of low-cost “kamikaze” systems in short order. The goal is to unleash 30,000 of these weapons as a first wave, then build toward hundreds of thousands more, reshaping how the United States fights and deters wars.
Behind the headline rhetoric is a tightly structured program that blends competition, mass production, and lessons from Ukraine into a single push for what officials now call drone dominance. I see a clear throughline: Hegseth is using procurement as a war game, forcing the industrial base to prove it can surge cheap, expendable drones as easily as artillery shells.
The mock draft: 30,000 drones at $5,000 a shot
The most concrete expression of this “drone draft” is a production sprint that asks a select group of companies to build 30,000 one-way attack drones at a price point that would have seemed impossible a decade ago. During the initial phase, 12 vendors are being asked to collectively produce exactly 30,000 drones at a cost of $5,000 per unit, for a total of $150 million. That figure, and the repeated emphasis on $5,000 as a ceiling, signals a deliberate choice to trade exquisite capability for volume.
Officials are not hiding the logic. A stable demand signal from the War Department is meant to convince manufacturers that this is not a one-off surge but the start of a long-term market for cheap, lethal drones. Hegseth has framed that predictability as essential to getting factories to invest in new lines and automation, arguing that a clear commitment to buy “lots of drones, on a regular schedule, over a long period” is the only way to keep capabilities up. In effect, the secretary is drafting industry into a standing force, with contracts as conscription notices.
Drone Dominance: from competition to standing arsenal
The 30,000-drone sprint sits inside a much larger architecture that the Pentagon now brands as Drone Dominance. The Pentagon has launched a $1.1 billion effort that aims to procure approximately 340,000 low-cost, one-way attack drones, transforming what used to be boutique special operations tools into a mass commodity. In official language, What Is the is an acquisition push designed to accelerate delivery of these systems to the field, with the secretary of the Department of War casting it as a way to keep pace with adversaries that are already mass-producing similar weapons.
Inside the building, the initiative is also known as DDP, a four-phase competition totaling $1.1 billion that is explicitly structured to put service members at the center of design choices and to deliver new capabilities in months rather than years. The Department of War has said it “expects to order 30,000 drones with deliveries to be fulfilled by July 2026,” with hundreds of thousands more planned in the next two years, according to Department of War. That cadence, if sustained, would give the United States a standing arsenal of disposable strike drones on a scale that rivals its stockpiles of precision-guided munitions.
Gauntlet trials and the 25-firm flyoff
To decide which designs deserve mass production, the Pentagon has staged what amounts to a flyoff among a handpicked group of manufacturers. Earlier this month, officials tapped 25 firms for a small, cheap attack drone competition, a move detailed in reporting by By Stephen Losey. The first phase of this contest, dubbed the Gauntlet by the DOD, is built around intensive evaluation at Fort Benning, Georgia, where prototypes are being tested for range, reliability, and ease of use. The process is less about picking a single winner than about mapping the trade space between cost, performance, and manufacturability.
Senior leaders describe this as more than a one-off contest. In their words, Drone Dominance “operationalizes the Secretary of War‘s acquisition reform priorities” by sending a clear demand signal to industry and rapidly getting new capabilities to the warfighter. The program’s early phase, valued at around $150 million, has been cast as part of “America’s Arsenal of Free World” and emphasizes rapid fielding of low-cost, one-way attack drones as the competition begins. In practice, that means the Gauntlet is less a beauty pageant and more a stress test for the entire supply chain.
Hegseth’s doctrine: drones for every squad
The industrial push is matched by a doctrinal shift that starts at the squad level. In a directive issued over the summer, Defense Secretary Pete ordered every US Army squad to be armed with small, one-way attack drones and to use them as necessary in the field. That memo, first highlighted by Breaking Defense, effectively treats loitering munitions as standard kit, akin to rifles or radios. It is a clear signal that Hegseth does not see these systems as niche tools for special operators but as everyday weapons for conventional units.
Hegseth has paired that order with a promise to cut procedural bottlenecks. In public remarks, Hegseth has said the move will cut “red tape,” and that Service members from all branches of the military will receive training on these systems. He has pointed to a recent Ukrainian battlefield example as proof that small units armed with cheap drones can punch far above their weight. In my view, that combination of mass procurement and squad-level integration is what turns the current effort into a genuine doctrinal revolution rather than a passing tech fad.
Lessons from Ukraine and the race not to fall behind
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Officials repeatedly cite Ukraine as a proving ground where cheap, one-way attack drones have reshaped the battlefield, allowing forces to strike armor, artillery, and logistics nodes at low cost. A separate overview of the program notes that the United States has “learned from Ukraine and many other battlegrounds” as it considers how it fields and uses these weapons, underscoring that the Drone Dominance push is as much about catching up as it is about innovating. The message is blunt: if the United States does not adapt, it risks fighting the next war with yesterday’s tools.
That sense of urgency is reflected in projections that tens of thousands of drones will be in the field by 2026 and hundreds of thousands by 2027, part of an initiative expected to produce 300,000 low-cost systems so the United States is not left behind, according to Dec reporting. The War Department’s own planning documents stress that a stable demand signal means it will make concrete plans to buy large numbers of drones on a regular schedule, a point Hegseth has echoed as he pushes industry to scale up. In that light, the mock draft of 30,000 “kamikaze” drones looks less like a stunt and more like the opening round of a long campaign to normalize massed, expendable airpower in American strategy.
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