Pentagon aims to quickly deploy more than 300,000 small drones

The Pentagon has issued a broad request to defense manufacturers to quickly supply and field more than 300,000 compact oneway attack drones, aiming for operators to be able to master their use in under two hours. The initiative, valued at $1 billion, is scheduled to provide these systems to U.S. forces by 2028.

The official request outlines requirements for lightweight strike drones capable of carrying at least 4.4 pounds of explosives and performing attacks in both dense urban settings and open terrain. Each unit must demonstrate the ability to maneuver across roughly six miles of unobstructed land and carry out precision strikes at distances exceeding half a mile in city conditions.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated in a video briefing that the U.S. must counter lowcost aerial threats with equally scalable technology rather than relying on highpriced interceptors. He confirmed that tens of thousands of these drones will be delivered in 2026, with production climbing into the hundreds of thousands by 2027, noting that their introduction will reshape U.S. combat doctrine across all military branches.

While the request does not provide a definitive model design, the described capability aligns closely with firstpersonview quadcopter platforms. The competitive selection process, labeled as gauntlets, will run through four rounds between February and July of next year and will require drone performance demonstrations. The first round calls for 12 companies to produce 30,000 drones, with later stages increasing total output while reducing both vendors and unit costs.

Firms eliminated in early phases are still invited to compete for future rounds. The effort accelerates recent Pentagon actions taken after a June 6 Executive Order by President Donald Trump calling for rapid expansion of the U.S. drone sector and increased integration of unmanned systems across federal agencies. A followup directive issued on July 10, 2025, authorized immediate drone procurement and deployment measures.

In recent months, several commands have initiated fieldlevel drone integration. U.S. Central Command established a task force in September to streamline drone delivery and repair, while U.S. Army Northern Command created a rapid response unit last month to counter aerial threats to domestic military facilities using a mobile defense package. U.S. Special Operations Command additionally introduced a 10day intensive program to train operators in both assembly and tactical use of firstpersonview platforms.

Author: Ethan Caldwell