Pentagon betting on drones in its largest budget request in history
Photo: US Department of Defense building (Wikimedia)
The US Department of Defense plans to allocate $75 billion to drones and counter-drone technologies as part of the largest budget request in its history, Bloomberg reports.
According to the ministry, a significant portion of these funds will be directed toward a sharp increase in financing for the Defense Autonomous Working Group (DAWG), which works with special forces and tests new systems.
In particular, $54.6 billion is planned for this unit, compared to just $225.9 million in the current year. This could become one of the largest annual funding increases among defense programs.
The Pentagon notes that most of the money will not go to developing new technologies, but rather to the procurement, evaluation, and modernization of existing unmanned systems.
DAWG works together with special operations forces, which test drones in real-world conditions and provide manufacturers with feedback for improvements.
The sharp rise in funding comes amid conflicts that have demonstrated the effectiveness of low-cost strike drones. In particular, disposable UAVs are actively used in the Middle East conflict.
The US has also begun using similar systems, deploying units with inexpensive strike drones based on Iranian technologies.
In addition, the Pentagon is investing in the development of drone swarms using artificial intelligence. Leading tech companies are involved in these projects.
At the same time, the final decision on funding must be approved by Congress, as part of the money is included in a separate budget package.
The Pentagon has already asked the White House to approve a request to Congress for more than $200 billion to finance operations against Iran, highlighting the scale of current military spending.
Estimates suggest that in just the first 12 days of the campaign, the US used a significant portion of its precision weapons stockpiles accumulated over the years, and replenishing them will require time and substantial funding.
Against this backdrop, the Pentagon has begun ramping up production of key air defense systems — including signing a $4.7 billion contract with Lockheed Martin to accelerate the production of interceptor missiles for Patriot systems.
