Ukraine makes about 4 million drones a year to fight the Russians, and Russia makes about 4 million drones a year to fight the Ukrainians. China, the world leader in drone production, could likely match them both combined. Meanwhile, the most heavily funded armed force on Earth, the U.S. Army, currently makes about 50,000 a year. If you think that seems like a problem, the Army agrees with you.
In interviews with Reuters and the Military Times, the Army revealed its public-private pilot program to turn the U.S. into a drone manufacturing giant, called SkyFoundry. The goal is to build one million small military drones in the next three years, on the way to making 500,000+ every year after. These would be everything from one-use kamikazes to multi-use drones, covering a range of different uses.
The need here is pretty obvious: drones dominate the war in Ukraine, accounting for 80% of battlefield casualties. Cheap drones might cost around $500, but they can destroy vastly more expensive and strategically valuable assets. But to date, individual drones are unreliable fires: they have high fail rates and there are a growing number of ways to counter them. For them to work as a weapon system, they really have to hit the frontline in large numbers. The Army isn’t currently set up for that. That’s partly an Army problem, but also partly an American problem. SkyFoundry hopes to fix both.
Building a domestic supply chain
Commercial drone use has surged in America over the last decade, from tech giants like Amazon to your friendly neighborhood hobbyist. You know who makes all those drones? It’s mostly Chinese companies, in particular the juggernaut DJI. That’s bad for the American economy: an important sector just doesn’t happen here. Just ask shipbuilders. But that’s also a national security risk, since the Army doesn’t exactly want to fill up its arsenals with stuff made by an adversary.
So one way to generate a domestic supply chain is for the military to show up with bags of cash. Again, just ask shipbuilders. A guaranteed client like that ought to get a bunch of companies working out drone production, and the Army will also look into what it can accomplish on its own. If successful, that could have ripple impacts as American-made drones get cheap enough to sell to civilians at competitive prices.
To that point, SkyFoundry actually doesn’t want to partner with traditional defense contractors, but companies that have a commercial focus as well. This might be a bit concerning to those traditional types, since increased drone spending is coming alongside cuts to more conventional assets like tanks and troop carriers. America’s military-industrial complex was built in an earlier era; the Pentagon seems to want to shake it up a little.
