The service issued a request for information Wednesday to help the program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors and the program manager for Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) get feedback from industry and identify potential solutions.

The Army wants to mitigate the cognitive burden for commanders and boost their situational awareness.

“As the Army continues to integrate advanced technologies and expand its use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), rotary-wing, fixed-wing, and emerging platforms, traditional airspace management methods are being challenged by the growing scale, speed, and complexity of operations,” officials wrote in the RFI.

“Traditional airspace management systems often struggle to process and respond to the vast amounts of data generated during operations, limiting their ability to provide actionable insights in real time,” they added.

The proliferation of drones will make airspace management even more complicated. The Army and the other services are under pressure from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to quickly integrate more small unmanned aerial systems across the force. Hegseth issued a directive earlier this month with the aim of accelerating that process.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is also pursuing new counter-drone tools, air-and-missile defense systems, and command-and-control tech to address growing threats.

The expanding use of UAS, loitering munitions and autonomous platforms will have to be taken into account by the U.S. military’s airspace management frameworks, which must also be able to deal with the presence of large numbers of friendly, neutral and enemy players — as well as other weapon systems and adversaries’ electronic warfare capabilities, the RFI noted.

“Army airspace management must adapt to rapidly changing mission requirements, including the need for real-time deconfliction, airspace prioritization, and coordination with joint and coalition forces,” officials wrote. “Effective airspace management must account for the coordination of indirect fires, air defense systems, and other effects to ensure mission success while minimizing risk to friendly forces.”

The Army is hoping artificial intelligence tools can lend a helping hand.

“AI-enabled airspace management solutions have the potential to address these challenges by leveraging machine learning, predictive analytics, and automation to enhance situational awareness, optimize airspace allocation, and enable rapid decision-making. Such systems can analyze real-time data from multiple sources, predict airspace usage patterns, and recommend proactive measures to improve safety, efficiency, and mission effectiveness,” per the RFI.

Responses to the RFI are due Aug. 29.

The service is looking to put vendors’ technologies through their paces later this year at a Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center event.

“The Army is seeking interested industry partners to deliver a minimum viable product (MVP) for an AI-enabled airspace management solution that enhances UAS operations during JPMRC Exercise 26-01,” officials wrote. “The MVP must be operationally ready for deployment to the 25th Infantry Division by November 2025 and capable of addressing some of the unique challenges of UAS management in contested and congested environments.”

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The Ban Military Drones Spying on Civilians Act, introduced by Democrat Rep. Jimmy Gomez on Friday, was referred to the House Armed Services and Judiciary committees for review. Text of the legislation was viewed by DefenseScoop this week, but hasn’t been published widely online.

“None of the funds authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2026 or any fiscal year thereafter for the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, or any other executive agency may be used to operate a covered unmanned aircraft vehicle in the United States to conduct surveillance of United States persons engaged in protests or civil disobedience,” the bill states.

In this context, the legislation defines “covered UAVs” as the MQ–9 Reaper and all variants, as well as any unmanned aircraft that uses an airframe initially developed for use by U.S. armed forces; is a medium-altitude, long-endurance aircraft or a high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft; or can fly at an altitude of 10,000 feet or higher.

If passed, the bill would also require the president to produce annual reports to Congress detailing every instance in which a covered drone is deployed by the government for novel purposes or for operations not authorized by Congress — “including with respect to a use by one executive agency for an authorized purpose to assist another executive agency that is not authorized to carry out such purpose.”

The reports would need to include information about any weapons the drones were equipped with and the information they collect about people on the ground.

A senior staffer on Gomez’s team told DefenseScoop that the congressman introduced this legislation “in direct response to recent actions” of DHS, which deployed surveillance drones over Los Angeles in June to monitor protests related to immigration enforcement. Notably, it was also put forth at a time when DHS and DOD are working closely on border security operations that involve expanded drone deployments.

Privacy hawks have raised concerns about DHS’s drone surveillance operations to capture information about civilians in recent years, including in 2020 when UAVs were flown over more than a dozen U.S. cities where demonstrators protested police violence after the killing of George Floyd. But Gomez has warned that the increasing sophistication and advancements of military drone technology warrant more explicit limitations on their use to track public protests.

“[Rep. Gomez] believes the U.S. government should never use military-grade drones to spy on its own people, especially those exercising their constitutional right to protest,” the senior staffer on his team told DefenseScoop.

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The Combat Action Recognition and Evaluation (CARE) for Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) Crews Act seeks to establish a “status identifier” for pilots of uncrewed systems who participate in combat operations to increase their access to services they earned.

In the context of military officials, status identifiers help track, classify, and communicate aspects related to their combat training, qualifications and readiness. 

The proposal was introduced by Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., who represent states with military bases where personnel operate multiple types of remotely piloted drones.

A Senate spokesperson from Rosen’s office shared a copy of the legislative text with DefenseScoop, as well as the language for a provision along the same lines as the bill that they confirmed was approved as an amendment in the SASC-passed version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2026, which is now up for review by the full chamber.

“Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretaries of the military departments, in consultation with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, shall establish a status identifier or equivalent recognition to denote the combat participation of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) crew members who conduct operations in direct support of combat missions,” the NDAA language states. “The identifier shall be designed to enable appropriate consideration by the [VA] in the administration of benefits and services that account for combat-related service, consistent with how traditional combat designators are treated.”

Veterans’ eligibility for benefits after they complete their military tenure is typically tied to certain discharge conditions and specific requirements they fulfilled during their service.  

The lawmakers’ hope is that drone pilots — who increasingly conduct high-stakes, real-world operations — will gain proper support and care that matches those given to other types of combat fighters and pilots, once they transition out of military service.

Rosen and Kramer proposed similar legislation during the last congressional session. The introduction of this text comes as the second Trump administration is placing a strong, strategic emphasis on reducing administrative and acquisition barriers for the military’s use of drones. 

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“We will speed up the timeline of rapid innovation. We have to, on behalf of our warfighters, on behalf of the threats that we face around the globe, on behalf of the changing face of warfare,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said.

During the “Multi-Domain Autonomous Solutions” event in the Pentagon courtyard, Hegseth and other Defense Department leaders shared new details about their near-term plans to quickly and drastically enhance the military’s drone arsenal, and deepen partnerships with producers across the sprawling American industrial base as they confront a range of contemporary policy and supply chain challenges. 

Eighteen autonomous prototypes currently under accelerated development to support joint military operations were showcased at the event, which was hosted by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. 

Some of those systems included the long-endurance unmanned aerial system with a 36-foot wingspan dubbed Vanilla and the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft, or GARC — a small unmanned surface vehicle that can deploy independently or as a swarm.

“[This is] really a whole effort to sort of adapt to the current threat environment, which has changed in the last … year. And what you see here is a response to that. And you’ll see continued iterations — we are not stopping. This is just the beginning of what a rapid program looks like, and a rapid effort looks like,” Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael told reporters.

The prototypes on display, he noted, went from concept to development in an average of 18 months.

“It’s an extraordinary achievement. This kind of thing was going to take five, six years,” Michael said.

It’s no secret that over the last half-decade, the U.S. military has increasingly faced serious challenges with buying, integrating and defending against unmanned systems. Further, while America has excelled at producing sophisticated, high-priced drones, the industrial base is struggling to compete with the proliferation of smaller and lower-cost systems being developed by China, Iran and other adversaries.

DOD leaders during the Biden administration launched the Replicator initiative in August 2023, with the overarching vision to accelerate industrial production and the military’s adoption of different drones in multiple combat domains through replicable processes by mid-2025. Future plans to continue or cancel that effort have not been revealed by Trump appointees to date.

“This is not the Replicator initiative,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Prototyping and Experimentation Alex Lovett said at the event. “The Replicator phase I tranche was looking at scaling. What we were able to do is — and you’ll see some of the platforms here were also participating in the evaluation of that — but our experimentation identified capabilities that were ready to scale for some of those.”

DOD’s new approach to “rapid prototyping experimentation,” according to Lovett, marks the institutionalization of the now defunct Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER), also set up under the Biden administration, to get new technologies in the hands of combatant command users as early as possible for testing and refinement.

“What we learned is: Yes, that is good and it is working. We don’t need a separate program telling me to go do RDER. We’ve adopted that and established [Mission Capabilities] under Mr. Michael as an entire directorate that does mission-based analysis, engineering experimentation, and operational assessment to facilitate the transition. So we’ve completely adopted that, and we’re continuing to do operational experimentation,” Lovett explained. 

Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX) events were a key component of those RDER pursuits in recent years. 

For now, the T-REX live-fire exercises and prototype demonstrations are set to continue to unfold at least twice a year to help military users assess the capabilities of new and innovative technologies for use in real-world operations.

“If you’re looking for a new initiative, part of this enabling of drone dominance [per Hegseth’s guidance] is the services now are standing up, [first-person view] drone schools and drone capabilities. At this next T-REX [in August], we will be starting to host ‘Top Gun’ school. We’re going to start playing red versus blue. Their best will come after our best defenses,” Lovett told DefenseScoop at the event.

“We are [also] looking at how to expand our T-REX too, in conjunction with NASA and the [Federal Aviation Administration] and the department. So again, across the whole federal government, that says we’re working together and breaking down the barriers,” he said.

All of the drones on display Wednesday already passed through the T-REX program and are being evaluated by the services for transition and fielding.

“What we’re trying to do is lower the barriers [and] invite more people in to do experimentation if they want to — but there’ll be other kinds of things [as well],” Michael said.

In his view, President Donald Trump’s recent drone-accelerating executive orders and Hegseth’s related memorandum will help address policy constraints and open the DOD’s aperture for drones and systems to accept.

“[They] say, ‘Hey, we’re open for business. We want your inventions. We want you to be qualified on our [Blue UAS] list, and we want the services to see what you can have — so you can build it, so that they can buy it,’” Michael said.

The undersecretary declined to comment on any forthcoming plans to change or cancel the 14 critical technology areas identified under the previous administration for strategic and focused investments. 

In response to questions from DefenseScoop on that topic, Michael responded: “It’s drone day!” 

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The memo “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance,” addressed to senior Pentagon leadership, combatant commanders and directors of defense agencies, referred to uncrewed systems as “the biggest battlefield innovation in a generation.”

“Our adversaries collectively produce millions of cheap drones each year. While global military drone production skyrocketed over the last three years, the previous administration deployed red tape. U.S. units are not outfitted with the lethal small drones the modern battlefield requires,” Hegseth wrote.

The directive calls for approving “hundreds” of American products for purchase by the U.S. military, arming combat units with a variety of “low-cost drones made by America’s world-leading engineers and AI experts,” and more widely integrating UAS into training exercises.

Here are some key deadlines that the SecDef laid out for Pentagon leaders:

• No later than Sept. 1, the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force must establish “deliberately screened, active-duty experimental formations purpose-built to enable rapid scaling of small UAS across the Joint Force by 2026, prioritizing initial fielding to U.S. lndo-Pacific Command units,” per the memo. “Within 30 days, the Office of Strategic Capital and Department of Government Efficiency will present options, including advance purchase commitments, direct loans, or other incentives … that accelerate the growth of the U.S. industrial base to outfit our combat units with cheap and effective U.S.-made UAS. To maximize these investments, each Military Service will establish, resource, and empower unsubordinated program offices solely focused on UAS, with an immediate priority towards small UAS. These program offices will compete to determine best practices in rapid acquisition and industry engagement with operational units. Drone dominance is a process race as much as a technological race. Major purchases shall favor U.S. companies, informed by Blue List ratings and strategic guidance.”
• By Jan. 1, 2026, responsibility for publication and maintenance of the Blue List of DOD-approved unmanned aerial systems, components and software will be transferred from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to the Defense Contract Management Agency. “The Blue List will become a digital platform that will continuously update an aggregate list of all certified U AS parts and systems, those with follow-up requirements, the latest user ratings, and all vendors approved to certify UAS parts and systems for the Blue List. The DCMA and the DIU will inform and align vendors on evolving Blue List expectations and develop a ratings system to identify best-in-class systems across the Joint Force. The Blue List will be dynamic, retaining all previous component and supply chain findings, and including updated performance evaluations from testing and key lessons learned from training. The Blue List will be searchable using artificial intelligence tools,” according to the memo.
• Within 60 days, the secretaries of the military department have been tasked to identify programs that would be more cost-effective or “lethal” if replaced by drones.
• Within 90 days, the secretaries of the military departments, in consultation with the Pentagon’s research and engineering directorate, have to jointly designate “at least three national ranges, with diverse terrain (including at least one with over-water areas) for deep UAS training, with low/no inter-service cost transfer,” per the memo, which noted that units operating UAS will “access DoD grounds with abundant airspace and spectrum allocation.”
• Next year, Hegseth said he expects to see UAS capabilities integrated into “all relevant combat training, including force-on-force drone wars.” And by 2027, all major training events across the Department must integrate drones.
• By the end of 2026, “every squad” is to be equipped with “low-cost, expendable drones,” with priority going to Indo-Pacific combat units.

“Our adversaries have a head start in small UAS, but we will perform a technological leapfrog and establish small UAS domain dominance by the end of 2027. We will accomplish this urgent goal by combining the Nation’s best qualities, including risk-taking. Senior officers must set the tone. Accelerating this critical battlefield technology requires a Department of War culture,” Hegseth wrote.

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Nearly $20 million would go to air vehicle development and about $15 million to mission systems development and integration. The rest of the funding would be allotted for systems engineering, control segment development and integration, and development support.

Officials noted that the spending plan for 2026 increased since the last budget submission.

The project, known as MUX TACAIR increment 1, will leverage previous work that the Corps has done for its Penetrating Affordable Autonomous Collaborative Killer-Portfolio (PAACK-P), which received funding in previous years under the Pentagon’s Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve initiative.

“We are experimenting with unmanned aircraft like the XQ-58 Valkyrie working alongside crewed platforms such as the F-35. Recent tests validated their ability to conduct electronic warfare, execute autonomous tasks, and support Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) missions — all of which improve the survivability and effectiveness of manned Marine aviation in high-threat environments,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith told members of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee in written testimony last month, adding that investments in collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs) and other technologies will reduce risk to personnel and increase the speed and accuracy of decision making.

The Marines want highly autonomous next-generation drones to serve as robotic wingmen that could take on high-tech foes such as China in places like the Indo-Pacific.

MUX TACAIR, or Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) unmanned aerial system expeditionary tactical aircraft, would be expected to support “mass buildup of a Joint Force against a peer/near-peer adversary,” according to budget documents, which noted that they could play a significant role in electronic warfare and reconnaissance missions.

“Project efforts focus on operations from austere Expeditionary Advanced Basing Operations (EABO) airfields in support of Marine Littoral Regiment (MLR) and/or Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) operations serving as the Stand in Force (SiF) for a Joint Force, providing lethal and flexible support to support from the land and sea. This project increases MAGTF lethality, capacity and interoperability in the reconnaissance and electronic warfare mission areas, complementing existing and future TACAIR capabilities and enhancing combat reach into the INDOPACOM Area of Responsibility (AoR), or wherever enhanced, stand-off lethality is needed by the Joint Force,” officials wrote in budget justification documents to support the fiscal 2026 funding request for research, development, test and evaluation.

The Marines plan to award up to three other transaction authority agreements to contractors before the start of the next fiscal year to support the program.

Prototyping and experimentation efforts slated for 2026 include expeditionary air vehicle components and subsystems focused on launch and recovery, conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) capability, electronic warfare subsystem and payload enhancements, interoperability via communications and datalinks, mission systems computing, command and control (C2) integration architecture interoperability, and open architecture applications, according to officials.

Demonstration of prototyping activities, including mission system integration and minimum viable product (MVP) flight tests teamed with crewed aircraft, “will maximize collaborative evaluation environments, which enable developmental and operational evaluation of prototypes and tactics development” by Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Two Four (UX-24) and Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron One (VMX-1)) during fleet exercises as well as weapons and tactics instructor courses hosted by Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1), according to budget documents.

Officials noted that the Corps plans to use a “spiral approach” to capability insertion for the program.

“MUX TACAIR Increment I will rapidly accelerate the time between development and fielding, ensuring rapid and relevant capability delivery of a Minimum Viable Product … to the warfighter,” per the budget documents. “Each spiral will have an associated MVP that is operationally relevant and balances schedule and technical complexity. The requirements within each MVP spiral will detail a minimum set of threshold capabilities required for training and tactics development with a unit of employment (e.g., fleet squadron).”

Development spirals will include enhancements in areas such as command and control, electronic warfare, mission computers and datalinks, according to officials.

Efforts in fiscal 2026 are expected to support an acquisition decision memorandum for Middle Tier of Acquisition rapid prototyping entry.

The Marines aren’t the only U.S. military service pursuing CCAs. The Air Force plans to spend $807 million in fiscal 2026 on its program.

Budget documents noted that the Marines will be “maximizing alignment” with Air Force and Department of the Navy CCA efforts “to reduce duplication and enhance interoperability through the use of compatible C2 implementations, mission systems, and common control architecture.”

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While the organization’s counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) efforts date back several years, the work by the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR) Center is part of Project Flytrap taking place in Europe.

Flytrap is a joint U.S. and U.K. effort to test new counter-UAS technologies in order to eventually incorporate them into formations. It began in the European theater last month, and may become a standard, yearly exercise, expanding on innovation and experimentation while building on lessons learned, Army officials said.

The event initially sought to bring these technologies down to the squad level and seek to lower the cost per drone defeated through new methods and technologies.

The U.S. military has been behind the cost curve when trying to thwart small drones, using million-dollar missiles to defeat large numbers of inexpensive UAS.

C-UAS has proved to be a difficult problem for the Army and joint force, dating back several years when terrorist and insurgent groups in the Middle East began strapping homemade explosives onto commercial drones and dropping them on troops’ positions.

The problem has grown since then, as evidenced in Ukraine’s war with Russia where first-person-view drones have been a prominent fixture of the fight. Based on its observations, the Army has realized it must up its game to protect its own forces from these types of attacks that will be inevitable in future conflicts.

Part of the problem is there aren’t many commercial C-UAS solutions on the market, akin to the ballooning availability of drones. And even if there were easy counter-drone solutions on the market, the military must knit them together to create a system of systems for thwarting overhead threats through a command and control architecture.

That’s where the C5ISR Center comes in.

“The genesis of it was create a C2 architecture that worked for counter-UAS that included individual soldiers all the way up to our joint partners,” Brandon Dodd, mechanical engineer with C5ISR Center, said in an interview. “How are we going to get data from individual sensors to individual soldiers and then all the way up and over to our partners? How does that look at each level? Where are the hiccups throughout that architecture? That’s where we came in, was we had some projects that were existing in counter-UAS.”

Flytrap aims to not only develop and test counter-UAS technologies and strategies, but inform new tactics for the Army in how to thwart these threats in the future.

The C5ISR Center serves as the Army’s science and technology hub, looking at problems and gaps that exist and beginning research and development through government solutions, at first, to solve them. They then work with industry to proliferate those solutions and get them into the field to soldiers and units.

The work for Flytrap is no different.

The C5ISR Center began by looking at best-of-breed sensors and working to link them up through a command and control architecture through the Army’s Android Tactical Assault Kit, or ATAK, where data from the sensors were shared across the force.

That work started with a set of commercial-off-the-shelf sensors that initially were stationary and tripod mounted.

The team then transitioned those stationary capabilities to vehicle-mounted tools to allow units to sense on the move — a more realistic scenario given these are maneuver units that have to go fast on the battlefield.

“Through rapid innovation, we’ve been able to adapt our sensors and effectors that are traditionally static and turn them into something mobile that fits the needs of the Army. To me, as a former operator, that’s a really big deal to have something that you can actually use when you go outside the wire,” Mike Moore, an engineering technician with the C5ISR Center who has been on the ground supporting Flytrap, said. “We’ve been able to mold the sensors and effectors and infuse them into a way that meets the soldiers’ needs on the ground, using a layered approach to command and control. The layered approaches we found is a necessity. We created one common operating picture using ATAK, something that that soldiers already have, we didn’t invent something new.”

The C5ISR team worked tightly with various industry partners on not only the vehicle integration, but constant software fixes and iteration in real-time with the unit to improve how the system worked based on feedback from troops during the exercise.

“We’ve shown that through some of our sensors that we’ve been able to solve these … lengthy software development problems very rapidly through how soldiers actually use the equipment and the tactics in which they employ them,” Moore said.

The team worked with V Corps and specifically 2nd Cavalry Regiment, initially planning to outfit a platoon but grew to a company element. The exercise has used Strkyers thus far, but the technologies are meant to be platform agnostic and capable across domains, officials said.

There were challenges to adapting a static, stationary sensor system to something that was mobile. Physics constraints posed challenges such as certain acoustic sensors that become more limited when they’re moving. The team at first developed quick fixes with industry to determine how best to employ the sensors in a way that they remain effective and still support maneuver operations.

One of those fixes was a way to pull the sensors off and set them up in a timely manner to provide the coverage needed.

The team developed a couple of different command and control layers — mostly through ATAK — and a variety of sensing modalities for drone detection and one modality for defeating them.

Sensor fusion was developed as to not cognitively overburden soldiers and reduce the amount of information they received. The C2 architecture allowed forces to not be co-located with the sensor and effector in order to use it. Because it was tied to ATAK, forces up and down echelon could track systems and cue the effectors, allowing for distributed command and control.

The government and industry teams were working hand-in-hand on the integration software in near real-time during the exercise.

“In terms of the other sensors where we created a whole new way for this for soldiers to employ them, we worked directly at the exercise with the vendor where we were modifying how our integration software works, how we were displaying things on a C2 system,” Dodd said. “Those things were stuff that we modified on the government side while the vendor actually was modifying their proprietary software on their side.”

Soldiers tested these sensors and systems in realistic environments overseas in almost live-fire scenarios.

“We’ve been able to incorporate realistic scenarios and knowledge of current [tactics, techniques and procedures] to help push these systems in a direction that apply real-world lessons learned. We’re not we’re not just creating something that works. We’re creating something that works in our current environment,” Moore said, adding there was an opposing force going against the unit while it maneuvered.

The next iteration of Flytrap will take place at the end of this month and will focus on conducting counter-UAS operations at the company and battalion-minus level for multi-day missions, according to Army officials. The soldiers will see a faster tempo, more realistic scenario to stress their skills and the systems.

“As we get into the exercise occurring in July, that’s certainly going to ramp up more where there’s even more live threats and it’s even more realistic for what they might see in a place like Ukraine,” Kevin White, global operation support and threat chief at C5ISR Center, said.

Officials noted that the team and unit have gone through the early phases and are hitting their stride through the first couple of iterations.

“Now it’s really, we do have some minor tweaks that we’re going to make from the engineering or technical aspects, but most of it is allowing the soldiers to now utilize what they’ve learned over the last few exercises and employ them while doing their other job,” Dodd said. “Allow a maneuver unit to do their normal mission and then add counter-UAS as the aside, that we see it going to be. Do that and then slowly ramp that up throughout the next exercise so that we stress it to its max while seeing what lessons [were] learned or how they incorporated it to their current mission.”

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“The Department of Defense must be able to procure, integrate, and train using low-cost, high-performing drones manufactured in the United States,” President Donald Trump wrote in the directive.

This new EO comes at a time when autonomous systems are increasingly proving to be game-changing on contemporary battlefields. Yet despite major investments, all of America’s military services are confronting serious challenges in adopting and deploying different-sized and affordable drones for widespread use.

DefenseScoop asked former defense officials and national security experts to share their analyses regarding the order, in separate conversations following its release last month.

“At first glance, the EO is directionally sound — it signals a strategic interest in accelerating the adoption of commercial unmanned aerial systems in the U.S. and reducing barriers to their use, particularly for testing and training,” Lauren Kahn, senior research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said. “That’s a positive step.”

David Rothzeid — a venture investor at Shield Capital, Air Force reservist and Defense Innovation Unit alum — echoed that sentiment, saying he views the EO “as a positive and timely move that supports both national security and the U.S. innovation ecosystem.”

“It sends a meaningful demand signal to American entrepreneurs and primes the broader market to accelerate development,” he told DefenseScoop. “That said, although the EO is well-aimed, its long-term impact will depend on execution.” 

A longtime procurement official, Rothzeid previously led acquisition pathways at DIU. He argued that the DOD at this point needs to “avoid repeating past mistakes where adversaries seized technological leads due to” slow adoption and over-classification postures at the Pentagon. 

“For example, the proliferation of Chinese-created DJI drones in both consumer and defense sectors continues to exacerbate our domestic sourcing. By failing to incubate and scale domestic alternatives earlier, we inadvertently ceded a portion of the Group 1 UAV market to foreign influence,” Rothzeid said, referring to drones on the small end of the spectrum.

Tucked into the new EO is a line that directs the department and military leadership to identify programs that hold potential to be “more cost efficient or lethal” if replaced by drones — and to submit a report to the president on their findings within 90 days of its publication.

“This is included as almost a throwaway because DOD has been doing that during its budget and strategy review,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told DefenseScoop.

He pointed to the Army terminating its Apache attack helicopter replacement program, noting that determination was “likely driven by a desire to use drones.”

“Other examples are the large increase in funding for the [Air Force’s] collaborative combat aircraft — a drone that would accompany manned aircraft — and endorsement of the Replicator program, which seeks to develop drone swarms and was started by the Biden administration,” Cancian said.

In Kahn’s view, that specific provision regarding recommendations on drones to replace legacy weapons “risks becoming a box-ticking exercise if services nominate programs they were already planning to retire.”

“However, if taken seriously and used to spur some of the efforts already underway in the department to accelerate the adoption of cheaper, attritable, drones and other precise mass capabilities, it could help rebalance a force still over-invested in costly, vulnerable legacy systems,” she said.

“As Ukraine and Israel have shown in recent days with Operations Spider’s Web and Rising Lion, low-cost UAS can impose asymmetric costs and scale far faster than exquisite platforms — making them strong candidates to replace select ISR, strike, or base defense assets. Still, systems shouldn’t be replaced just for the sake of it; the goal is a high-low mix where attritable drones complement, not supplant, more advanced capabilities,” Kahn told DefenseScoop.

Despite being titled “Delivering Drones to Our Warfighters,” Section 9 of the order spotlights elements that she considers more associated with airspace issues and training — and “less about breaking down challenges the department faces when it comes to acquiring, sustaining, and rapidly scaling UAS, and other emerging capabilities.”

Khan further noted that the EO “entirely overlooks” unmanned surface vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, and other autonomous and remotely crewed systems.

Meanwhile, “a welcome provision is the push to allow all platforms on the Blue UAS list to operate on military installations without requiring policy exceptions,” she told DefenseScoop.

Managed by DIU, Blue UAS is a Pentagon program that is designed to help the department rapidly pinpoint and approve secure commercial drones for government use.

“That’s the kind of specific change that can have outsized operational impact by enabling more rapid experimentation and deployment. However, it largely emphasizes access to airspace — an essential and persistent issue, particularly when it comes to deconflicting some of the challenges of airspace above military installations that the DOD itself faces,” Khan said, adding that the directive “largely targets known, second-order problems rather than the deeper, more significant structural barriers the DOD faces when adopting UAS at scale.”

Tom Adams, director of public safety at DroneShield, also said the EO marks a step in the right direction, but suggested more needs to be done.

“[There] were some noticeable gaps in the language related to the authorities for public safety, and critical infrastructure, for example, that I believe is meant to be addressed with more formal legislation,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing how Congress tackles this issue that is so crucial to the security of the homeland.”

Rothzeid also spotlighted the directive’s Blue UAS provision in his discussion with DefenseScoop. To him, it’s “critical” for DOD to expand that list and update it with newly approved industry-made capabilities more frequently. 

“There are new players with innovative UAS platforms popping up in the space all the time — and while it’s important to make sure UAS platforms are secure and compliant — being more flexible to let new vendors in will accelerate the pace of innovation by widening the number of platforms DOD can procure rapidly,” he said.

Rothzeid offered several other suggestions, beyond what was covered in Trump’s order, that could help the military more rapidly field combat-ready drone systems. 

He recommended DOD improve companies’ access to testing ranges, particularly for drones that are built or modified to withstand interference from electromagnetic sources for emergency response or other purposes.

“Startups consistently face delays and red tape when trying to test their systems in realistic electromagnetic environments. This is a critical gap, especially considering that several U.S. platforms sent to Ukraine failed due to inadequate battlefield resilience,” Rothzeid said.

He additionally urged the Trump administration to ensure that the demand signal from the new EO is supported by budget allocations in the near term to enable its implementation. 

“Ultimately, policy without procurement falls flat. If this EO is to deliver on its promise, DOD will need to match it with funding, contracting pathways, and accountability to ensure real dollars flow to companies building these next-generation systems,” Rothzeid told DefenseScoop.

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“We recently did a session with the secretary of defense and we are going to stand up a joint interagency task force” focused on thwarting drones, Gen. James Mingus, vice chief of staff of the Army, said during an event Wednesday co-hosted by AUSA and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS), as it is known in DOD parlance, is a key challenge for the military. Commercial technology has evolved in recent years such that drones on the civilian market are extremely cheap to buy and simple to operate. It has also become less challenging to 3D print parts and devices that can fly.

This has made it significantly easier for nation-states and terrorist groups to procure these types of systems and strap bombs to them, allowing adversaries to level the playing field against higher-tech combatants such as the U.S. military.

The C-UAS challenge has existed for about a decade as insurgent groups in the Middle East began acquiring these systems and targeting American troops, marking the first time since the Vietnam War that U.S. service members didn’t have full control of the skies and faced an aerial threat on the ground.

The Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict a few years ago was also a global watershed, serving as one of the first instances where drones helped win a war.

As has been seen in Ukraine, both Kiev and its Russian foes have taken to using first-person-view drones as missiles, turning the battlefield into something more akin to World War I-style warfare where troops are limited in movement due to the risk of being seen and shot on the battlefield.

The Ukrainians have perfecting the use of these capabilities, leveling the playing field against the Russians — whose military was much larger and possessed significantly more firepower — by taking out tanks with FPV drones.

“One junior sergeant in the 47th Ukraine mechanized brigade, he got the Order of the Gold Star and Hero of Ukraine [awards] because he is credited [with] 434 enemy killed, 336 enemy wounded, 42 tanks destroyed, 44 infantry fighting vehicles, 10 tracked amphibs and 20 armored personnel carriers all destroyed in a five-month period. He is a first-person-view drone pilot,” Lt. Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, director for joint force development on the American military’s Joint Staff, said at a special operations symposium hosted by NDIA in February. “That is what he brings — the lethality of about a division. I mean, that is an incredible record.”

Similarly, the Houthis, a group backed by Iran that has controlled portions of Yemen, including the capital, since 2014, have been executing a multi-year on and off again onslaught against commercial and military ships transiting the Red Sea as a protest against Western support for Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas.

While most of those drones were neutralized, the U.S. military is losing the cost-curve battle by using million-dollar missiles to defeat large numbers of inexpensive UAS.

Mingus equated the C-UAS challenge today to the effort to counter improvised explosive devices during the Global War on Terror. Insurgents began fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq with remotely controlled roadside bombs, to great effect, catalyzing a joint and interagency effort by the United States called the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization. The nation also mobilized with great speed to produce Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles, which saved countless lives.

Mingus offered few details regarding the new counter-drone task force, but noted it’s something officials have been advocating for a while.

“We need an organization that is joint, interagency, has authorities, a colorless pot of money and the authorities to go after from requirements all the way through acquisition in a rapid way to be able to keep pace with that. We are in the process of standing that organization up and get it going,” he said. “The Army is going to lead it, but this will be a joint organization to be able to deal with joint solutions in the future. We’ve been trying to advocate this for some time now, and the secretary recently made the decision to allow us to move out on it, because we cannot move fast enough in this space.”

As part of the Army’s budget request this year, it has sought to add a new agile line for C-UAS, along with UAS and electronic warfare, to be able to keep pace with emerging technologies and changing battlefields.

“Once we think we’ve got it figured it out, then the adversary is going to come up with something and we need … to be able to evolve. This is not going to be a static environment. It’s got to be something that’s moving at the rate in which the technology is moving on the other end,” he said. “Instead of like we have done in the past, where we’ll buy a system and buy that same system for 20 years, we’re going to have to have both the flexible funding to go with it and the agility to [acquire] whatever is out there that will deal with the threats today, in the next year. It may be something different. We’ve got to have both the authority and then the funding flexibility to be able to switch to whatever that solution is going to be for the next year.”

Part of the challenge for C-UAS is there isn’t a mature commercial market akin to the UAS market, meaning solutions need to be bespoke and purpose-built.

Mingus said countering drones requires a layered approach.

“No single solution. It’s got to be at every level. It’s got to be layered. Every squad’s got to be able to protect itself, all the way up to formations that provide higher-end capability,” he said. “There’s going to be a multitude of solutions — long, short and close in — that are out there.”

He added that officials want a combination of lasers, high-powered microwaves and interceptors, which will be key to driving down costs.

“Interceptors that continue to come down in cost, so that the price point between shot and what the adversary is doing … has to be in line. We can’t shoot a $130,000 missile at a $1,000 drone. We’ve got to get the price points down. But there’s an interceptor role that’s out there,” Mingus said.

The Army currently leads the military’s Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, or JCO. Mingus on Wednesday did not flesh out what the relationship will be between the JCO and the new counter-drone task force.

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LASSO — which was a new-start program in the previous budget — is now part of the service’s Launched Effects family of systems and has been realigned under that line item in the 2026 budget.

Drone maker AeroVironment has been manufacturing Switchblade systems for the initiative. The Switchblade 600 carries high-precision optics and an anti-armor warhead. It has upwards of 40 minutes of loitering endurance, a range of 40-plus kilometers, and a “sprint speed” of 185 kilometers per hour, according to a product description from the vendor. The all-up round weighs 65 pounds.

The request for additional loitering munitions — also known as kamikaze drones or one-way attack drones because they’re designed to destroy their targets by crashing into them — in 2026 comes as officials are undertaking a new Army Transformation Initiative to modernize the force for future high-tech combat. The service is moving to divest of capabilities that are outdated and put more money into other equipment.

“The Army Transformation Initiative, or ATI, as we’ve coined it, is a strategic shift. We’re reinvesting resources to ensure our future dominance as part of the joint force,” a senior Army officials told reporters Thursday at the Pentagon during a background briefing about the budget. “We made some tough choices to shed outdated systems and programs that no longer meet our demands of the modern battlefield,” including divesting from legacy anti-tank missiles, they noted.

Kamikaze drones have played a major role in the Ukraine-Russia war, and U.S. military leaders are taking lessons from that conflict as the seek to modernize their forces.

The Army is aiming to deliver five brigade combat teams-worth of loitering munitions in fiscal 2026. The budget request includes about $68 million for 98 fire control units, 294 all-up rounds and other program elements under LASSO. Nearly $13 million in reconciliation funding would procure an additional 19 LASSO production systems.

“Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs) lack adequate proportional organic capabilities at echelon to apply immediate, point, long range, and direct fire effects to destroy tanks, light armored vehicles, hardened targets, defilade, and personnel targets, while producing minimal collateral damage in complex terrain in all environmental conditions,” officials wrote in budget justification documents.

Army leadership wants to give troops new kamikaze drones to fill that capability gap.

The man-portable LASSO is a day/night capable, lightweight, unmanned aerial anti-tank weapon that includes an all-up round and fire control system, according to an Army description of the technology.

“The LASSO range requirement is to fly less than or equal to 20km (straight line with auxiliary antenna) with a flight endurance that enables the Soldier to make multiple orbits within the IBCT typically assigned battlespace, to acquire and attack targets within and beyond current crew served and small arms fire. The range/endurance enables the unit to utilize reach back capability and maximize standoff. Unlike existing direct and indirect fire weapon systems, LASSO’s discreet payload and unique capability delivers Soldiers the ability to abort against targets in a dynamic situation (e.g., use of human shields) or prosecute targets that would have been deemed non-viable in past due to the higher collateral damage associated with alternative munitions,” according to budget documents. Follow-on increments are expected to support capabilities for company and below echelons, focusing on increased range, enhanced lethality and advanced payload options.

Officials noted that the program is aligned with ATI and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s directive for Army transformation and acquisition reform.

It’s also intended to support the Army’s transforming-in-contact initiative — an effort spearheaded by Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George with a particular focus on unmanned aerial systems, counter-UAS and electronic warfare capabilities — and expand prepositioned stocks in the Indo-Pacific region, where the U.S. military is concerned about a potential future conflict with China.

The LASSO program will use other transaction authority for contracting, which is intended to cut through bureaucratic red tape and help the military field new technologies faster than traditional acquisition processes. Officials also intend to award up to four hardware contracts to modernize the industrial base and generate domestic ammunition stockpiles, according to budget documents.

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