Posted on 07/13/2025 11:17:17 AM PDT by Twotone
The Pentagon has announced sweeping new changes intended to surge the fielding of small drones, including weaponized types, across the entire U.S. military. Most notably, certain types of smaller uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) will now be treated as “consumables,” more akin to hand grenades and other kinds of ammunition, than aircraft, which has broad ramifications. Lower-level commanders will now also be able to procure smaller UASs directly, as well as authorize subordinates to operate them. The new policies rolled out today represent a huge shift that could not come soon enough for the U.S. military, which has continued to move extremely slowly to field drones on a widespread basis, even as lessons learned in blood from active battlefields have become ever more pronounced.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the new drone policies today with a glitzy video, seen below, in which a small uncrewed aerial system brings him a copy of the official memo. A full copy of this document, which is titled “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance,” can be found here. Hegseth highlighted the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, where small drones, especially first-person-view kamikaze types and ones configured to drop small munitions, have become an omnipresent factor on both sides of the fighting, as a key driving force behind the changes. As TWZ regularly notes, the expanding use of drones, including small weaponized commercial designs, and the threats they present, far predate the war in Ukraine.
(Excerpt) Read more at twz.com ...
We’ll be ready for the last war. But what will the next war look like?
so, who makes um for us?
domestic, hopefully.
Agreed.
Good question!
.
Killer drones were once controversial, but everyone else seems to be using them and we can’t afford to lag behind.
They shall beat their swords into Plowshares.
.
Working on the Predators I always
Thought that Smaller would be better.
.
But they had a Good Run.
We have seen fogs of these computerized drones replicating the appearance of fireworks.
We're still building aircraft carriers. We should have stopped building them in the '80s.
Now you want to build motherships with drones instead. We should have 100 motherships instead of 11 aircraft carriers.
Way overdone.
The default bomb for US aircraft is the Mk82, with a weight of 500 pounds, mostly explosive.
What is the weight of explosives on a default drone. Not a UAV. A drone. Reasonable estimate is 2-3 lbs.
What sort of crater can you make with 2-3 lbs.
I believe these drone innovations will lead to main battle tanks controlling swarms with AI.
With the instruction that nothing can get within 2 miles of it.
The same will be true for large naval combatants, with a much larger exclusion zone.
AI is the next super innovation.
About time.
Before I retired in 2019, we were integrating sensors onto drones. More than just video. Which drone? We made our own because the Army would not identify a Group 1 drone to use, saying there was no approved requirement for one. they would only tell us which drones we could not use, which was all of them on the market at the time.
Improvements are happening at lightning speed. I've seen recent video from Ukraine where they are now dropping 130mm and 155mm projectiles.
Enough to make any SAM, any grounded airplane, or any part of a logistics chain dysfunctional. The Ukes figured out that you don’t have to kill a T72, you just need to kill the trucks bringing it gas and ammo.
“China” for some parts might be the next big ugly surprise...
Back in the 1980s, my company was looking at finding well camouflaged fuel and oil pipelines that the Soviets would lay across the German countryside to support their tank forces in a thrust across West Germany. Blow those up and they don’t get more than 100 km into West Germany before they pretty much run out of fuel. It’s pretty easy to keep those pipelines knocked out as they don’t move much. Also, fuel trucks and bridging units were looked at as high priority targets.
If he’s holding it up, it ain’t 500 lbs.
Biden shipped gazillion Mk82 500 lbs to Israel just last year to use against Hamas.
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