SkyFoundry Act Aims to Fix America’s Drone Shortfall

China and Russia are churning out millions of drones every year, flooding battlefields and supply chains with cheap, expendable aircraft, while the United States struggles to produce small drones at scale, as War on The Rocks reports.

That imbalance is no longer theoretical, it is shaping modern warfare in real time, and Congress is finally moving to respond.

Rep. Pat Harrigan of North Carolina introduced the SkyFoundry Act to confront this gap head on, and the proposal has now been folded into the latest National Defense Authorization Act.

At its core, the law authorizes the creation of a government owned, government operated drone production system capable of building up to one million small unmanned aircraft systems every year.

For the drone industry, and especially for anyone who flies, builds, repairs, or follows drones closely, this bill signals a major shift in how the United States thinks about drones, manufacturing, and supply chains.

Why the US Fell Behind on Drone Production

For years, the US military treated small drones as niche tools rather than mass consumables. Procurement cycles dragged on, designs aged out before they reached production, and supply chains leaned heavily on foreign components, many of them tied directly or indirectly to China.

Meanwhile, conflicts overseas proved that small drones are no longer precious assets. They are expendable, rapidly evolving systems that need to be replaced constantly. China and Russia adapted quickly, building industrial pipelines that favor speed, volume, and iteration over perfection.

The SkyFoundry Act is an admission that the old model failed. Instead of relying entirely on private defense contractors moving at traditional speeds, the Department of Defense is now authorized to stand up its own innovation facility and its own production facility, both run by the US Army, with industry plugged directly into the system.

The production target is striking. Once fully operational, the facility must be capable of producing one million small drones per year. That scale alone changes the conversation.

How SkyFoundry Changes the Drone Industry

The SkyFoundry Program is designed as a hybrid system. The government owns and operates the facilities, but contractors, startups, universities, and nonprofits can embed engineers, provide components, and contribute designs. Intellectual property rules ensure the government retains rights to continue production even if vendors change.

To move fast, the law allows the Pentagon to bypass many traditional acquisition bottlenecks. Alternative contracting mechanisms, rapid prototyping pathways, and even regulatory waivers are explicitly authorized if they would otherwise slow development or production.

For drone companies, this opens a door that has been mostly closed until now. Instead of betting everything on a single long contract, vendors can plug into a production ecosystem where designs evolve continuously based on battlefield lessons, testing feedback, and real world use.

For DroneXL readers, especially those involved in manufacturing, components, software, sensors, or repair workflows, this matters because it creates sustained demand at massive scale, not just for finished drones but for motors, cameras, radios, batteries, navigation systems, and autonomous software.

What This Means for Civilian Drone Users

Even if you never plan to sell a drone to the military, SkyFoundry is likely to ripple into the civilian market.

Large scale domestic production tends to drive down costs, shorten supply chains, and accelerate innovation. Techniques developed to rapidly assemble, test, and repair millions of small drones do not stay locked behind military gates forever. They influence commercial platforms, enterprise drones, and eventually consumer models.

Cutting China out of critical supply chains also reduces the risk of sudden bans, shortages, or firmware dead ends that civilian drone users have already experienced in recent years. A stronger domestic drone manufacturing base gives US companies more leverage and more resilience.

There is also a talent effect. Engineers, technicians, and pilots trained inside SkyFoundry facilities do not disappear when their contracts end. They move into the broader drone ecosystem, raising the overall skill level of the industry.

DroneXL’s Take

The SkyFoundry Act is not just another defense bill checkbox. It is a recognition that drones are no longer specialty tools, they are infrastructure, and infrastructure has to be built at scale. If the program succeeds, it could quietly reshape the US drone market from the inside out, making drones cheaper, faster to iterate, and less dependent on fragile global supply chains.

This is one of those rare moments where military policy and civilian drone innovation start flying in the same direction.

Photo credit: Adrienne Brown