Pentagon’s DOGE unit calls for US military to acquire 30,000 small drones

The Pentagon plans to acquire at least 30,000 small, low-cost drones in the coming months as part of an aggressive new initiative to expand US domestic drone production and streamline military procurement. The effort is being driven by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, within the Pentagon, a unit whose growing influence now extends into the US defense-industrial base.

The move was reported by Reuters, which cited Pentagon officials and others familiar with the plan. The news agency claims that DOGE is coordinating a major push to source specifications from across the US Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and the Defense Innovation Unit. The goal is to rapidly build a catalog of approved US-made drones, reduce red tape, and shift production away from platforms that depend on Chinese components.

According to Reuters, DOGE’s team — led by former Marine and Goldman Sachs trader Owen West — is preparing to submit a report to the Office of the Secretary of Defense outlining the scale and timeline of the program. If implemented, it would represent the largest US acquisition of small tactical drones to date, as well as a turning point in how the military approaches unmanned systems procurement.

The initiative follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s July 2025 directive to “assert US drone dominance” and train combat units for what he called the “era of drone wars”. That statement reflected lessons drawn from the conflict in Ukraine, where mass-produced drones — often costing only a few thousand dollars — have become decisive on the battlefield during Russia’s ongoing invasion.

For the United States, the DOGE program marks both a modernization push and an acknowledgment that it is playing catch-up. Analysts note that, while the Pentagon fields sophisticated systems such as the MQ-9 Reaper and RQ-4 Global Hawk, it has lacked the capacity to produce cheap, expendable drones at industrial scale. In contrast, Russia and Ukraine now deploy tens of thousands of small UAVs every month.

Ukraine, for example, has announced plans to manufacture 4.5 million first-person-view (FPV) drones in 2025 and at least 30,000 long-range attack drones, while Russia claims to have produced hundreds of thousands of small UAVs and tens of thousands of loitering munitions. In that context, Washington’s 30,000-unit target appears modest — but it likely signals a major cultural and industrial shift within the Pentagon.

Companies positioned to benefit include Skydio, Red Cat Holdings, PDW Inc., and startup Neros, which already supply tactical drones to US forces. Their products range from lightweight quadcopters used for reconnaissance and targeting to larger multi-rotor systems capable of carrying small payloads. Prices reportedly range from the low thousands of dollars to several hundred thousand dollars, depending on size and configuration.

The initiative’s relationship with the Pentagon’s Replicator program — launched in 2023 to field thousands of autonomous drones — remains unclear. Reuters reported that some Replicator capabilities have already been “transitioned to the appropriate end-state users,” suggesting the DOGE effort could absorb parts of that project.

For now, the Defense Department has neither publicly confirmed details nor issued contracts tied to the 30,000-drone plan. But the direction is unmistakable: after two decades of investing in complex, high-value remotely piloted aircraft, the U.S. military is shifting toward producing large numbers of affordable drones quickly, and accepting that many will be lost in combat.

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