Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday announced sweeping changes to the way the Pentagon buys and fields uncrewed air systems, or UAS, with a goal of establishing “UAS domain dominance” by 2027.
Hegseth announced the policy changes in a video recorded on the Pentagon’s front lawn. With Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” playing in the background, a quadcopter delivered a memo announcing the policy changes, which Hegseth then signed.
“While our adversaries have produced millions of cheap drones, before us we were mired in bureaucratic red tape,” he said in the video, which he posted from his official X account. “Not anymore.”
The memo lists three broad goals: bolstering the U.S. drone manufacturing base, delivering thousands of low-cost systems to military units over the next few years and integrating drone operations into training programs.
“Next year I expect to see this capability integrated into all relevant combat training, including force-on-force drone wars,” Hegseth wrote in the memo.
The announcement builds on a June 6 White House executive order that calls for normalizing drone operations and integration into the national airspace as well as investment in production and emerging technologies across commercial, civil and national security sectors.
Specifically, Hegseth’s expansive memo rescinds past policies established by the Defense Department in 2021 and 2022 that provide guidance for implementing congressional mandates that restrict the U.S. military from buying drones and components produced by Chinese companies. It gives procurement authority to combat units to buy, test and train with small UAS that comply with statute and encourages “local innovation” like 3D printing parts.
The memo also references a Defense Innovation Unit-led effort called Blue UAS — established in 2020 as a process for certifying commercial drones for military use. According to the memo, responsibility for maintaining and publishing the list of compliant drones, known as the “Blue List,” will shift to the Defense Contract Management Agency.
“The Blue List will be dynamic, retaining all previous component and supply chain findings, and including updated performance evaluations from testing and key lessons learned from training,” the memo states.
The document says that DOD has failed to field UAS at speed and in the numbers that the modern battlefield requires. It calls for department-wide reforms to how the military services buy drones and directs the secretaries of each department to “modify or delete” any policies that overregulate testing, training, procurement and fielding.
Further, it directs the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps to each create active duty formations by September, built for the sole purpose of scaling the use of small drones across DOD — with initial systems delivered to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command by 2026.
The services must also create and resource “unsubordinated program offices” focused entirely on rapidly acquiring drones. The memo also tasks them to identify, by September, any existing programs whose requirements would be better met by uncrewed systems. The services will be required to detail improves they’ve made to acquisition processes as part of their fiscal 2027 budget submissions.
Hegseth also tasks the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Strategic Capital with presenting financing options — like direct loans or advance purchase commitments — to inject funding into the U.S. drone industrial base.
“Our adversaries have a head start in small UAS, but we will perform a technological leapfrog and establish small UAS domain dominance by the end of 2027,” Hegseth wrote. “We will accomplish this urgent goal by combining the Nation’s best qualities, including risk-taking. Senior officers must set the tone. Accelerating this critical battlefield technology requires a Department of War culture.”
Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a focus on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on some of the Defense Department’s most significant acquisition, budget and policy challenges.
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