Twenty-five manufacturers of small, low-cost uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) will compete next month for about $150 million in orders from the Pentagon.
The Department of Defense on Tuesday announced the participants for Phase I of its Drone Dominance program, under which it plans to order 30,000 one-way attack drones at about $5,000 per unit. By the time the multiphase, $1.1 billion effort wraps up in 2027, the Pentagon aims to deliver about 340,000 small drones to military combat units, driving down costs as the effort progresses.
The 25 Phase I manufacturers—an increase from a December announcement that called for 12 vendors—will compete in the first of four “gauntlets,” during which military operators will put the drones through a battery of mission scenarios. The evaluations will begin February 17 or 18 at Fort Benning in Georgia, home to Lawson Army Airfield (KLSF). A full list of participants can be found here.
When the first gauntlet concludes in early March, the Pentagon will place $150 million worth of orders, with deliveries of production-ready aircraft starting “shortly thereafter” and continuing over the next five months.
“Our adversaries collectively produce millions of cheap drones each year,” wrote Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a July memorandum. “U.S. units are not outfitted with the lethal small drones the modern battlefield requires.”
Drone Dominance
Hegseth’s July memorandum outlined his plan to meet the goals set by President Donald Trump’s “Unleashing American Drone Dominance” executive order, issued the month prior.
Among other things, the order directed federal agencies and regulators to get more drones in the hands of the military quickly and cheaply. Hegseth said he did so by stripping away red tape around procurement and shifting those responsibilities to unit commanders.
“I am rescinding restrictive policies that hindered production and limited access to these vital technologies, unleashing the combined potential of American manufacturing and warfighter ingenuity,” he wrote. “I am delegating authorities to procure and operate drones from the bureaucracy to our warfighters.”
“The second step,” Hegseth said in December, “is to kick-start U.S. industrial capacity and reduce prices, so our military can adequately budget for unmanned weapons.”
The Pentagon officially announced its Drone Dominance program in December by issuing a request for solutions (RFS) from the private sector. It will award more than $1 billion in funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act across four phases.
The goal is for UAS evaluation cycles to be shortened from years to months. A second gauntlet is planned to take place six months after the first, with subsequent evaluations following the same cadence.
The program will initially focus on small attack drones. As it progresses, the Pentagon anticipates it will procure increasingly cheaper and more capable aircraft at a higher rate. Later phases could see it place larger orders—up to 150,000 drones—from fewer vendors at a price point as low as $2,300 per unit.
By 2027, the Pentagon aims to deliver hundreds of thousands of UAS. Hegseth in December said “tens of thousands” could be delivered in 2026.
Officials believe the routine, long-term orders will create a “stable demand signal” for the domestic drone industry, incentivizing it to meet the military’s requirements by ramping up production. When the program ends, the hope is that private firms will have improved their supply chains and manufacturing capabilities enough to meet those future needs, allowing the military to buy the “drones it wants, in the quantity it wants, at a price it wants.”
Per Hegseth, the Pentagon will also change the way it evaluates small UAS for combat.
“Next year I expect to see this capability integrated into all relevant combat training, including force-on-force drone wars,” he wrote in July.
At the same time, the government is limiting the use of drones produced in countries such as China. Most recently, the Federal Communications Commission added all foreign manufacturers of UAS and their equipment to its covered list, effectively banning the sale of new products in the U.S. It later loosened the ban to exclude equipment on the Pentagon’s Blue UAS list, which has been thoroughly vetted and approved for military use.