Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum on June 29 creating a single Pentagon office with authority over nearly every unmanned systems program in the U.S. military. The Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, or DRPM-UxS, reports straight to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg and absorbs the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group along with the counter-drone task force JIATF-401. The Pentagon released the seven-page document on Wednesday, hours after Breaking Defense first reported its contents.

For American drone manufacturers, the line that matters most sits deeper in the memo. The Defense Innovation Unit, the office that runs Blue UAS certification, becomes the primary interface between the Pentagon and commercial industry for the entire portfolio. I have tracked this consolidation arc since Hegseth’s first drone dominance directive in July 2025, and this memo is its acquisition-side capstone. One office now holds the pen on the largest drone budget request the Pentagon has ever made.

DIU Becomes the Single Front Door for American Drone Makers

The memo designates the Defense Innovation Unit as the primary industry engagement interface between the Pentagon and its commercial partners for every program under the new office, which means American companies selling small unmanned systems to the military will increasingly deal with one buyer and one certification pipeline.

DIU already sat at that gate. Hegseth’s July 2025 directive ordered DIU to work with the Defense Contract Management Agency to scale the Blue List, the registry of vetted American-made drones and components. The new memo goes further. The department’s existing unmanned systems marketplaces move under DRPM-UxS oversight as well, Breaking Defense reported, pulling the various storefronts the services built for drone buying under one authority.

The money behind that door is enormous. The fiscal 2027 budget request asks for $75 billion for drones and counter-drone technology, with $54.6 billion going to the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, the successor to the Replicator initiative. When DroneXL covered that request in April, Bloomberg described the DAWG increase as the largest year-over-year jump of any defense program. The route to market for much of that spending now runs through DIU.

The DRPM-UxS Portfolio Covers Small Drones in Every Domain

The memo describes the new office as “the single joint integrator for all unmanned and autonomous system programs” in the department, with directive authority over small and medium unmanned aircraft, ground robots, most unmanned vessels, and the software that controls them, while the services keep their largest unmanned airframes.

  • Unmanned aircraft in Groups 1 through 3, the small and medium classes that dominate current battlefields
  • All autonomous ground vehicles
  • Unmanned surface vessels, except the Navy’s medium unmanned surface vessel program
  • Unmanned underwater vessels, handled in coordination with submarine portfolio manager Vice Adm. Robert Gaucher
  • Autonomy and swarming software programs, plus the department’s unmanned systems marketplaces
  • Counter-drone systems, with the JIATF-401 director taking on counter-UxS responsibility under the new office

The big airframes stay put. Programs such as the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray, and the MQ-4C Triton remain with the services, USNI News reported.

Both DAWG and JIATF-401 fold in immediately. JIATF-401 stood up in August 2025 as the Pentagon’s joint counter-drone body. DAWG carries the Replicator lineage, a program the Pentagon’s DOGE unit took control of last October after fielding targets slipped.

The Drone Czar Gets Acquisition Power Before It Gets a Name

Hegseth granted the DRPM-UxS milestone decision authority over its programs, precedence on unmanned acquisition matters behind only the secretary and deputy secretary, the power to direct service contracting activities, and direct hire authority that exempts the office from hiring freezes and force reductions across the department.

The memo cites 10 U.S.C. § 4204(b)(5) to justify placing milestone decisions with an alternative official, arguing that unmanned programs need higher-level leadership and non-traditional acquisition approaches. The office will also decide how unmanned systems get tested and assessed before fielding, and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told USNI News the reorganization “directly implements a series of decisive actions taken by the administration.”

What the memo does not include is a name. No director has been appointed, and a Pentagon spokesperson declined to tell DefenseScoop whether an interim lead is in place. Hegseth set near-term deadlines for staffing the office and building a full inventory of the military’s unmanned programs, but the clock only matters once someone owns it.

DroneXL’s Take

American drone makers have spent a decade dealing with a customer that had a hundred mouths and no wallet. This memo creates one mouth and hands it the wallet. I have watched this build piece by piece: the July 2025 drone dominance directive, the DOGE takeover of drone procurement in October, the Army’s million-drone plan in November, and April’s $75 billion budget request. A single czar with milestone authority is the logical endpoint of that arc, and for American manufacturers like Neros and Skydio it is the clearest buying signal this industry has ever received.

Here is my warning. A single front door only helps if it opens. DIU has been a chokepoint before. When I covered the Artemis attack drone tests in Alaska in July 2025, the program had funded drones and no service buyers, and Blue UAS certification has moved slower than the companies waiting in its queue. Route a $75 billion portfolio through that same office and every delay gets multiplied. The blanket exemption from hiring freezes tells me the Pentagon knows exactly where this could break.

The czar also still has no name. Watch who Feinberg puts in the chair, because that appointment will say more than the memo does. Congress is not done either: the Senate Armed Services Committee advanced language on June 11 permitting a four-star Robotic and Autonomous Systems Combatant Command, which would bolt an operational command onto the acquisition consolidation Hegseth just ordered. If the right operator lands in this job, it is the best news for American drone manufacturing since July 2025. If a process manager gets it, the Pentagon just built the most powerful bottleneck in the industry.

Sources: Breaking Defense, USNI News, DefenseScoop, Hegseth memorandum (PDF).

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.