Pentagon Wants $54 Billion For Drones (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0181843042
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/22/0411248/pentagon-wants-54-billion-for-drones
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/pentagon-wants-54b-for-drones-more-than-most-nations-military-budgets/
> The US military's massive $1.5 trillion budget request for the next fiscal year includes what Pentagon officials described as the largest investment in drone warfare and counter-drone technology in US history. The proposed spending on drone and autonomous warfare technologies within the FY2027 budget proposal for the US Department of Defense would surpass most countries' defense budgets and rank among the top 10 in the world for military spending, ahead of countries such as Ukraine, South Korea, and Israel.
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> Specifically, the Pentagon is [1]requesting $53.6 billion to boost US production and procurement of drones , train drone operators, build out a logistics network for sustaining drone deployments, and expand counter-drone systems to defend more US military sites. The funding request is budgeted under the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG), an organization established in late 2025 that would see a massive budget increase after receiving about $226 million in the 2026 fiscal year budget.
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> [...] Another $20.6 billion would help purchase one-way attack drones and drone aircraft developed through the US Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which is building drone prototypes capable of teaming up with human-piloted fighter jets. Part of this funding would also go toward defensive systems for countering small drones and the US Navy's Boeing MQ-25 drone designed to perform midair refueling of carrier-borne fighter aircraft to extend their strike ranges. Such drone-related spending even rivals the entire budget of the US Marine Corps. But the Pentagon has not said that it is creating a dedicated drone branch of the US military similar to the standalone Space Force.
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> Pentagon officials emphasized that most of the money would go toward procuring drone and autonomous warfare technologies that already exist, and is largely separate from additional funding that would bolster US domestic manufacturing capacity to build such weapon systems. "That $70 billion is all going into existing systems and technologies," said Hurst. "The industrial base support is entirely separate."
"The evolution we've seen in the battlefield is this evolution of technologies in the timeframe of weeks, not the typical years we see with our defense production," said Lt. Gen. Steven Whitney, director of force structure, resources, and assessment for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Pentagon [2]press briefing . "So it's really critical we work with industry to get that capability fielded."
[1] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/pentagon-wants-54b-for-drones-more-than-most-nations-military-budgets/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16Ozxn6-v84
Healthcare? No. Welfare? No. Social Services? No. (Score:3)
Better ways to kill people that only differ from us in placement on this muddy rock we inhabit? HELL TO THE YEAH!
What a fucked up set of priorities we have.
Re: Healthcare? No. Welfare? No. Social Services? (Score:2)
Yup.
Re: (Score:2)
The federal budget is spent a lot more on medicare and social security than the military.
However the real problem here is that everything i listed above is just funneling money to very few monopolies that don't do a good job at all.
They're not shit because it lacks money, they're shit because they're mega monopolies that can freely control the price of everything, and you end up with a bad service.
It's more a problem of serving the corporations too much, rather than a problem of budget allocation.
Bullshit (Score:2)
SS and Medicare come from a completely different tax pool. It's not part of the main budget. You're spouting weasel words.
Re: (Score:2)
Drones are the only way Ukraine is able to defend itself against the numerically superior russian army that is invading.
Yes, defending your land against invaders that torture & kill civilians and bomb children is a priority.
I would also like you to protest with the same energy the immense build-up of weapons and invasion ships that communist China has accumulated. If you live in the US, you're going to witness it ... rather soon.
Re: Healthcare? No. Welfare? No. Social Services? (Score:2)
China will leave us alone if we let them rule the South China Sea and other regions close to them. But as a fellow imperialist country we are going to send forces thousands of miles away from our own borders just to start a war with China.
Re: (Score:2)
But they are [1]drones built on a shoestring budget with 3D printers [dronexl.co], which the [2]large corporations of the rich nations [reuters.com] despise.
[1] https://dronexl.co/2026/03/31/rheinmetall-ceo-papperger-ukraine-drones-housewives-lego/
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/rheinmetall-wins-multibillion-euro-deal-supply-german-army-drones-2026-04-22/
Re: (Score:2)
Err...you do know that "Defense" of the nation is one of the few actual duties and activities given to the Federal Govt. by the Constitution, eh?
Imagine (Score:2)
The sort of shit you could fix with $1 554 000 000 000.00 around your own streets. Walking down Ocean drive in Miami Beach 4-5 black dudes (one with a monkey on his shoulder) ask me calmly in passing "want some coke" or somesuch. Chillin on the beach a guy walks around offering cheap joints with various kinds of weed and assorted other chemicals. And the place is brimming with police! Your country is rotten to the core.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that coke is illegal. So we've driven it underground and now we've doubled the problem - we still have coke users, and on top of that we now have a black market.
Re: (Score:2)
> The problem is that coke is illegal. So we've driven it underground and now we've doubled the problem - we still have coke users, and on top of that we now have a black market.
And society is so shit that everybody's looking for some form of escape, and most are too unimaginative to come up with a non-drug escape, which drives demand for those drugs that are only available on the black market. Somehow, I'm sure this is the [1]Throat Goat's [thebrag.com] fault. (Reagan, not Madonna.)
[1] https://thebrag.com/madonna-nancy-reagan-throat-goat-explained/
Just get rid of a tax break or two (Score:2)
If they just remove a tax break or two for the billionaires, I am sure there will be plenty of money for this. Or they can move some ICE funds around to pay for them. They paid to put this admin in place, they should pay for this war we didn't vote for too!
Re: (Score:2)
Drones can replace a lot of very expensive military gears.
They're sadly the future of the war, a bunch of buzzing until a side is dead.
No more large scale soldiers, No more tanks, no more jets (other than stealth bombers that probably will be retrofitted as stealth drone droppers), just a plague of cheaply manufactured, gun carrying flying buzzers.
They need to shake things up first (Score:2)
$54B to traditional MIC companies is a hard sell. They should instead drop a few billion in purchases and R&D grants on Anduril to see if they can really scale up as hoped. Anduril's approach is a lot more like China and Iran where they don't rely on fancy Western style MIC manufacturing and build platforms that are designed to be constructed with civilian manufacturing facilities.
That's why Iran is such a menace to Ukraine, Israel and the US. They can build loads of dirt cheap suicide drones that are p
Re: (Score:2)
Buy the anti-drone drones from Ukraine. They already know how to make them, and could use with the money.
It's almost like the U.S. military completely ignored that Russia gets all its drones from Iran, and now we're shooting down $20k drones with $3 million missiles.
Probably a good investment (Score:1)
The US has been at war for about 95% of its existence.. why start wondering if there are better uses for the money now?
Cost plus basis? (Score:2)
I heard somewhere that the US MIC runs on a cost plus basis which motivates them to inflate the cost massively. Hence the manual assembly of interceptors and other missiles.
Can anyone confirm or deny this?
Makes sense (Score:2)
Billions for Drones is a good investment - as long as we are getting millions of them. If that is the cost of 1 drone, then no.
But it should also involve a decrease elsewhere. Cut the ridiculously stupid battleship and replace it with a Drone carrier.
Known Problem (Score:2)
Several news outlets have reported on this in some fashion very recently.
The U.S. military has spent billions of dollars on very high tech weaponry, but they don't have enough of them for a sustained war, and they don't have enough good mid-grade stuff to compliment for a sustained war. The hubris is evident; the U.S. will quickly win wars with high tech weapons.
e.g. If the U.S. has 10,000 99.999% accurate anti-drone missiles that cost $100,000 each but Iran has 20,000 drones costing $20,000 each, who has
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is that they are getting their toys and you will not.