Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wants to equip all U.S. Army units with cheap, first-person view (FPV) military drones.
Ukraine has become a leader in the production of cheap, FPV drones.
Now, a “mega deal” could be in the works, worth up to $30 billion for Ukraine to sell drones to America in exchange for missiles.
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On July 10, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced a sea change in U.S. defense policy. More than a decade ago, America pioneered the wide-scale use of military drones, flying Predator drones first on surveillance, then strike missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the decades since, U.S. dominance of this groundbreaking defense technology eroded, to the extent that “global military drone production skyrocketed over the last three years,” while the U.S. all but stood still.
Now, said the SecDef, it’s finally time to “support our industrial base, reform acquisition, and field new technology” to equip the U.S. military “with the lethal small drones the modern battlefield requires.”
All of which sound like fine ideas. But over the past few days, a new question has emerged: Will our defense base actually get to build these drones — or might they end up getting built by someone other than American defense contractors?
Image source: Getty Images.
As a first step to upping America’s drone game, Hegseth directed that the Pentagon open a competition to buy 10,000 Purpose-Built, Attritable Systems (also known as kamikaze, one-way attack, first-person view, or FPV drones) for under $2,000 apiece, and to get the purchase done within 12 months.
One week later, the Pentagon hosted a demonstration of 18 American-made drone prototypes that might fit the bill. (Or might not. Most American drones manufactured by AeroVironment (NASDAQ: AVAV) and Kratos Defense and Technology (NASDAQ: KTOS), or even Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) or still-private defense contractor Anduril, after all, are reported to cost “tens of thousands of dollars” each.)
This might complicate Pentagon plans. On the one hand, the Defense Department wants to support American defense contractors. But on the other hand, it wants to buy drones cheap. So what’s the solution?
While American companies figure out a way to build the number of drones the Pentagon needs, for a price the Pentagon will be willing to pay, another country with hard-won experience manufacturing affordable, expendable FPV drones may be able to step in and fill the gap.
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