Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s American drone dominance memo is more than a policy shift, it’s a declaration that the Pentagon is again prioritizing America First by putting innovation at the forefront of our defense strategy.
For years, our military relied on a bureaucratic procurement process that encouraged the status quo, while Russia and China raced ahead by modernizing their military by implementing low-cost, scalable drones. With Secretary Hegseth’s new directive, America will compete with our adversaries to scale new innovative tools of war here at home, with American workers, to defend American interests on the battlefield.
Following President Donald Trump’s Executive Order to set the framework for a massive acceleration of the adoption and integration of drones, and the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill to boost U.S. drone capabilities, the Defense Secretary’s memo lays out how to quickly integrate drones into a modernized, 21st-century military.
Secretary Hegseth’s announcement to unleash “the combined potential of American manufacturing and warfighter ingenuity” allows the military to run with us – former warfighters and innovators in the drone manufacturing space – in a way previously not possible. It marks a huge break from the previous administration’s old procurement playbook chock full of red tape and compliance drills that only served the interests of large incumbent defense contractors.
As the Secretary knows, good memos are only half the battle. If senior Pentagon leadership is serious about American drone dominance, we must start moving with real dollars, now. That means issuing a demand signal that gives American manufacturers the confidence they can take the leap to make long-term investments in building the infrastructure necessary for large-scale production. American defense tech companies are staged at the starting blocks; we just need the U.S. government to show a willingness to issue a large demand signal and run with us. This new administration is headed in the right direction. They just need to go further and enforce this innovative mindset shift throughout all levels of the Pentagon.
Some may assume the Pentagon is holding off on scaling production to first identify the “right” product through innovation. While this logic may seem reasonable, it misunderstands the nature of manufacturing infrastructure and the time it takes to build at scale. Although the federal government rightly supports innovation and testing, establishing manufacturing demand must happen in parallel with — or even ahead of — product development. If not, our drone industrial base will fall even further behind our adversaries.
This is especially critical for unmanned, attritable systems that will be decisive in a Pacific theatre conflict. These systems demand robust core manufacturing capacity, something the United States currently lacks. Federal and state governments must begin investing in that infrastructure immediately, even if the specific systems produced evolve over time. Testing and iteration should continue, but they cannot be prerequisites for the industrial base, and demand signals are needed now.
Right now, U.S. service members are buying their own commercial drones out of pocket because they can’t get what they need through official channels. As a former U.S. Army Special Operations officer, I’ve encountered first-hand testimonies of service members personally funding the military’s attritable system gap. One young noncommissioned officer spent $5,000 of his own money to support his unit’s drone adoption—nearly 20% of the unit’s total allocated funds for the same effort. Meanwhile, China and Russia are moving fast and deploying swarms of expendable and adaptable small drones, not built for perfection, but for overwhelming effect.
We can’t wait for the perfect blueprint, we are moving now, and we need the Pentagon to run with us.
American manufacturers like Vector, the mission-driven defense technology company I co-founded last year in Utah with fellow elite warfighters and leading drone technologists, are ready to meet the moment and supply our nation with small drones at scale. We are at the core of President Trump’s America First agenda. This is about military readiness and fulfilling President Donald Trump’s economic revival to reshore American manufacturing.
President Trump said it best, “The entire Trump economic agenda is about making it easier to do business in America, to create jobs in America, to hire American workers and to build your factories here in America — not in China or any other country.”
He’s right.
National defense should be made by Americans who believe in this country and have the experience to know what we need on the battlefield.
We are standing ready to fulfill the mandate of American drone dominance that President Trump and Secretary Hegseth are putting forward. We stand ready to deliver American-made drones at scale. But we need a clear demand signal. Not a speech. Not a memo. But a purchase order, and a large one at that.
Talk is cheap. We must buy here, in America, and buy now.
Andy Yakulis is a former Army Special Operations Officer and CEO and Co-Founder of Vector, a mission-driven defense technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah.
(Featured Image Media Credit:Screen Capture/CSPAN)
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