The Pentagon is about to order 30,000 drones to fill operational gaps. Large groups but also Ukrainian companies were involved. And with the attacks on Iran, missiles and radars are also needed, “borrowed” from South Korea.
The Pentagon is ready to order 30,000 attack drones within a short time, declaring which are the first winning companies of the Drone Dominance initiative, the armament program decided to bridge the gap with nations which, by having these devices at their disposal, have achieved results in battle while keeping costs down. Over the past two weeks, unmanned platforms from 25 drone companies have undergone dynamic testing as U.S. military operators subjected one-way attack drones in a series of combat readiness tests at the Fort Benning range in Georgia, and we are expected to know the names of the factories that will receive a maxi order for three tens of thousands of small expendable attack drones to be delivered to military units in the next five months. The tests involved about 100 military personnel, largely from the Army, Marine Corps or special operations community, who evaluated the drones in simulated combat situations, such as sending a drone ten kilometers to strike a specific target.
Ease of use is key: operators were provided with just two hours of training for each remotely piloted aircraft system before starting operations. At the end of the exercise, these soldiers were asked to evaluate them individually according to various parameters, from ease of use to effectiveness. To date, the Pentagon plans to spend around $5,000 per drone in the first phase of the program, which for 30,000 units corresponds to a figure of $150 million. However, US Defense’s hope is to reduce prices to $2,000 per unit over the life of the project by taking advantage of the economy of scale and massive production. Once this tender is concluded, in August it will be the turn of anti-drone systems and related countermeasures, experimenting with solutions that guarantee the navigation of these devices even in the absence of a GPS signal, communications and in an environment in which electronic warfare is underway. The Drone Dominance initiative follows a July 2025 memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calling for every Army team to be equipped with small, unidirectional attack drones by the end of 2026, and the Pentagon announced the holding of these demonstration exercises last month.
Not everything went smoothly from a political point of view: while conservatives had expressed themselves in favor of the program, Democratic senators Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), and Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), criticized the Pentagon for not having interacted more directly with the Ukrainian drone manufacturers, who were still able to participate in the tender. Certainly Kiev’s military are among those who today have been able to gain great experience with the technology of small attack drones, i.e. those that end their mission by becoming projectiles that explode against the targets. In the meantime, however, the conflict in the Middle East is requiring the constant use of air defense systems and interceptor missile batteries, so much so that the US has reportedly transferred some of them to the Gulf, taking them from the availability of US bases in South Korea and loading their components onto large cargo planes such as the C-5 and C-17. It wouldn’t be the first time, it also happened last year before the US attacks against Iranian nuclear sites, but after that campaign the Patriot launchers and missiles were repositioned in Seoul territory. In particular, the current operations against Iran are highlighting that the military of the Islamic Republic is still capable of hitting radar stations positioned in the Gulf countries, or inflicting serious damage on precious and very expensive systems such as Thaad (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missile stations and Atacms launchers, i.e. tactical missile systems.
