On July 10 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stood in front of the river entrance of the Pentagon to disclose his new policy called “unleashing US military drone dominance.”
His objective was to clear away the “red tape” and other obstacles and gear up US drone manufacturing. His focus was on “small” unmanned aerial vehicles, which he hoped to scale up across the joint force by 2026.
Hegseth was accompanied by hovering drones as he gave his talk. One drone, reportedly, was produced by a US company Neros. That drone was dangling a sheet of paper which, it turns out, was apparently the Hegseth memo. Hegseth reached up and snagged the paper, which he proceeded to sign. (I printed out the policy memo and it needs more than one page, so maybe the signing was just to show how enormously important drones are.)
Small UAVs are a big part of the ongoing warfare in Ukraine. Both the Ukrainians and the Russians are using them in enormous quantities. Most of them are known as FPV drones. FPV refers to first-person-view drones. The drones are flown by nearby operators who pick out targets and drive the drones to hit them.
There are different versions of FPV drones, but in Ukraine the usual version is a quadcopter running four electric-powered motors. The drone has a camera that transmits near-real-time video to the drone operator. He (or she) can see what the camera sees, using either computer goggles or a laptop or tablet computer.
Such drones do not need GPS for navigation; they transmit video. The video can be jammed, although on a battlefield jamming is not always successful and can interfere in your own drone operations. Recently the Russians introduced drones that transmit through ultra-thin fiber-optic cable in order to allow them to use their own jammers while taking away the enemy’s ability to jam the Russian fiber-optic-controlled drones.
In the early stages of drone warfare the explosive package strapped onto a quadcopter was often the warhead from a rocket-propelled grenade. More recently, specialized warheads are finding their way onto drones.
Short-range battlefield drones range from very simple machines with plastic bodies, cheap cameras and mass-produced electronics to improved platforms with better jam resistance, better explosive packages that can penetrate armor and, in some cases, computers that can lock onto a target and close in on it without the operator’s guidance.
Longer range but still battlefield-worthy drones also play a role. The Russian ZALA Lancet has proven very effective against armor vehicles, air defense complexes and command centers. Priced at around $30,000 (compared with a few thousand for quadcopters), it is built with Western and Chinese electronics.
Hegseth was not clear on what drones he wants to see mass produced, what price points would be acceptable to the Pentagon or what the mix might be for effective battlefield operations. What he was clear on was that his directive is aimed at setting up American-manufactured, American-sourced drones as quickly as possible. This is music to the ears to American drone companies, which, presumably, will greatly benefit from new orders and lots of cash.
Can we get there from where we are now, assuming that DOD will order thousands of cheap drones? A lot depends on the type of drones required (which is not clear), the cost of the components, the domestic supply chain (to the degree it exists), the ability to recruit and train workers and how the US-only drones compare with their competition.
Most of the world’s cheap supply of drones and drone components is Asian, specifically Chinese. The Ukrainians and Russians rely, for cheap drones, on tens of thousands of Chinese parts, including
motors,
cameras,
controllers,
electronics and
tablets or goggles.
Important Chinese drone makers include DJI (which has arounds 70% of the commercial drone market), EHang, Autel Robotics and Yuneec. DJI has a large US distributor network. The US government is currently considering whether to ban DJI from the US market, although that has not happened as yet and may wind up in significant litigation if a ban is put in place.
There are also lots of suppliers of drone components from China. For example, SunnySky manufactures very stable small electric engines for drones. The company SunnySky USA is owned by Zhongshan LangYu Model Company, Ltd, and all the motors are made in China. Another motor company EMAX also produces small motors for drones and distributes them in the USA. I have been unable to locate its Chinese parent company, but all the products are manufactured in China.
What applies to the small motors for drones also is true of the onboard cameras, electronics and controllers for small drones: The majority of them for low cost drones are from China. As you climb the scale of sophistication, you find stabilized cameras, more sophisticated electronics (often with US-sourced components) and better operator hardware.
Hegseth is seeking to localize manufacturing in the United States, but that is a challenge given the nature of the US labor market, supply chain and required investment. There is no information yet to indicate how a US-only sourced drone would compare in price with a Chinese-sourced platform, but the odds are great that the US-only pricing will be high comparatively and the ability to deliver in significant quantities limited.
There are other alternatives, but they are off the table at present.
One of them is to turn to other Asian manufacturing sources to produce parts needed for US drones. In other words, let US drone companies seek supplies from other countries, but not China. That would potentially accomplish three goals:
It would lower manufacturing costs.
It would be a faster way to ramp up production.
It would allow US companies to focus on developing better software, improved and smarter electronics, and other techniques to improve the lethality of small drones.
There is no reason not to encourage joint ventures or even outright ownership of foreign manufacturing facilities.
What makes this pathway unlikely at present is the strong administration emphasis on USA-only products for national defense.
However, the above suggestion does not require that an entire drone be manufactured offshore. Focusing on the labor-intensive parts, with the rest made in the USA, could meet existing Buy America requirements and also help assure US military drone dominance.
Stephen Bryen is a special correspondent to Asia Times and a former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. This article, which originally appeared in his Substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy, is republished with permission.
