The Pentagon Must Prove It Can Replace Its Drones

The Pentagon should buy small drones as ammunition: equipment it expects to use, lose and replace. Its July 10 memorandum^[1] agrees, treating small drones as consumables and ordering procurement policies rewritten. I would judge the reform by whether units can replace lost drones and replenish their defenses during a sustained fight. The memo describes the gap: drones account for most of this year’s casualties in Ukraine, U.S. adversaries collectively produce millions of cheap drones annually and American units lack the lethal small drones they need.

Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping showed how quickly naval missiles can be depleted, The War Zone reported in May 2024.^[2] Its budget review put the short-range Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) at $950,000 and the longer-range SM-6 at $4.27 million a round. The Royal United Services Institute’s April 2024 study^[3] estimated an armed first-person-view (FPV) drone at $800 to $1,800. At those prices, one RAM costs as much as roughly 500 to 1,200 attack drones. The chart compares nominal unit-price estimates for different missions and years, not matched engagements, complete capabilities or costs per successful mission.

A logarithmic dot plot compares published nominal U.S. dollar unit costs. An armed first-person-view (FPV) drone is estimated at $800 to $1,800, and a representative reconnaissance quadcopter at $2,000, versus $950,000 for RAM, $1.49 million for ESSM Block II and $4.27 million for SM-6 interceptors. The FPV line joins the endpoints of a reported price range; the comparison spans different missions and is not a record of matched engagements or costs per successful mission. — Estimates published in 2023 and 2024 put selected naval interceptors at roughly 500 to 5,000 times the unit cost of small drones in nominal U.S. dollars. Sources: Trevithick;^[2] Bronk & Watling;^[3] IEEE Spectrum.^[4]

Cheap drones do not make sophisticated weapons obsolete. Wes Rumbaugh^[5] of the Center for Strategic and International Studies makes the strongest case for expensive interceptors: a ship defending commercial traffic needs the range to protect other vessels, while cheaper, shorter-range defenses may cover only the ship itself. A commander should choose the shot most likely to protect the crew, even when it costs more than the incoming weapon. Rumbaugh also notes that ships deploy with the missiles loaded in port and argues that the United States cannot afford endless interceptions in the Red Sea. Congress should fund shorter-range defenses where they can do the job, preserving long-range weapons for missions that need them. If we can do more with less, we should. The value of the ship justifies the missile. It does not refill the magazine.

The Pentagon has been trying to fight tomorrow’s war with yesterday’s procurement process. Its own memo says previous approaches failed to field drones at scale and speed,^[1] and its answer includes purchases refreshed in small lots every few months. That matters because the same study’s authors, Justin Bronk and Jack Watling,^[6] called for updates to drone software and subsystems every six to 12 weeks to keep pace with countermeasures. Congress should accept the cost of repeated competition and changing designs: some duplication, failed trials and less certainty about the final configuration. Procurement officials should shorten the path from a failed test to an improved design while keeping the tests and audit trail intact.

The force-on-force drone exercises the memo calls for next year^[1] offer a test. The services should require units to replace lost drones and replenish their defenses while the exercise runs, measuring delivery delays and the cost of completed missions alongside successful launches. If the replacement pipeline stops before the exercise does, do not call the force ready.

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