Pentagon Plans Huge Buy of Kamikaze Drones Through 2028

The Pentagon is finally moving with more urgency, launching a one billion dollar effort to buy hundreds of thousands of small one way attack drones, and the goal is to force the entire defense industry to reorganize around scalable, low cost production, The War Zone reports.

The initiative is called the Drone Dominance Program, and it implements War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s major procurement overhaul announced in July, which reframed small drones as consumable items, more like ammunition than aircraft, giving lower level commanders the authority to buy and use them directly.

The funding provided by the Big Beautiful Bill is ready to be used to mount an effective sprint to build combat power. We call it Drone Dominance. At the War Department, we are adopting new technologies with a “fight tonight” philosophy – so our warfighters have the cutting-edge tools they need to prevail.

The Department of War says it expects to purchase thirty thousand drones with deliveries completed by July 2026, then rapidly scale up to more than two hundred thousand units in 2027.

The multiyear plan ends in early 2028 with a total inventory of roughly three hundred forty thousand small uncrewed aircraft, which is a dramatic increase for the United States but still far below the enormous volumes seen in Ukraine and Russia. The Pentagon admits that it has been too slow to adopt lower cost drones in meaningful numbers, and this program is intended to correct that trend.

The Drone Dominance website outlines a phased approach, with fixed price orders placed under existing federal procurement authorities and all manufacturing tied to secure domestic supply chains. The goal is to push vendors to lower the per unit cost from five thousand dollars to about two thousand three hundred dollars by the final phase, while increasing production capacity and maintaining reliability in harsh battlefield conditions.

Competitive Gauntlet Trials Will Determine the Best Systems

The program is built around four phases, each beginning with a Gauntlet challenge event where military operators fly competing systems in real mission scenarios.

These tests include ten kilometer strike missions across open terrain and one kilometer strike missions inside simulated urban landscapes, both requiring drones to carry a minimum payload of two kilograms.

The Pentagon expects most submissions to be FPV platforms or small quadcopters, since the projected cost range aligns with drones similar to the ones used heavily on the Ukrainian front, and the Pentagon don’t want to fall behind those.

After the first phase, the top performers will receive fixed price orders for at least one thousand drones each, with payment only for units that are delivered, inspected and accepted. Vendors absorb all development and manufacturing risk, which pressures them to improve quickly while still meeting large volume targets.

The competition will get significantly harder with each phase, adding more complex mission profiles and strong counter UAS elements, and the Pentagon wants to see vendors adapt their designs, strengthen the electronics, improve survivability and increase production output between phases.

One unusual element is that the program will not eliminate vendors between phases. Companies that fall short in one round are encouraged to come back later, which is intended to keep innovation flowing instead of funneling all opportunities into a single early selection. A public scoreboard will track results from each Gauntlet event, although the Pentagon has not said how that information will be shared.

A Race To Build a True Drone Industrial Base

By the final phase, the Pentagon plans to narrow the field to five vendors who can produce large quantities of combat ready drones at the required low cost. The first competition begins on February 16, 2026, and only twenty five invited companies will participate. Industry responses to a December Request for Solutions will determine who makes the cut, and companies selected in January will move forward to the Gauntlet trials.

The Pentagon stresses that this push is not only about buying drones, but about building a sustainable industrial base capable of producing them at scale. The department says that previous attempts to modernize small UAS procurement stalled because traditional acquisition processes are slow, expensive and poorly matched to a system that is meant to be expendable. Treating drones like ammunition shifts the entire mindset, allowing commanders to stockpile them, expend them freely and integrate them into everyday tactics, training cycles and frontline missions.

The stakes are high for participating vendors, since whoever proves they can mass produce low cost combat drones for the United States military will likely shape the future of American drone warfare. Even though the individual contracts are modest by major defense program standards, the long term opportunity is enormous, especially as small drones become standard equipment for every platoon, squad and individual fire team.

DroneXL’s Take

The United States has talked about matching Ukraine’s drone innovation for years, and this program is the first serious attempt to make it happen at scale. A one billion dollar push is still small compared to the millions of drones seen overseas, but it represents a major shift inside the Pentagon, especially the move to treat drones like consumables instead of delicate aircraft.

FPV platforms dominate modern battlefields because they are cheap, precise and replaceable, and the Pentagon is finally accepting that reality. If the Drone Dominance Program succeeds, it could transform American ground units by giving them a steady flow of inexpensive strike drones, all designed, built and improved inside the United States.

Photo credit: USMC/DOD, X / @SecWar