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 ...
“China” for some parts might be the next big ugly surprise...
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very edgie in chyna right now
It's not 500lb.
Okay, look. This is not even debatable.
If you don’t need 500 lbs on a bomb, the US of A would not have been hanging 500 lb bombs on wings for what, 75 years?
If they were not needed, do you think pilots would have wanted all that weight on the wing?
Unless the chemistry of the explosive is not what it was, by a factor of 10(!!!), then there is no magic and these things are toys. Anti personnel weapons? Yeah, you can chase someone around and hope he doesn’t have some netting to toss at the propellers. But you are not going to achieve what 500 lbs of Tritonal can do.
There are just zillions of things you can’t do. Can’t take a building down. Can’t crater a runway. Can’t wipe out an entire regimental headquarters. And that list goes on.
This is PR. It’s not anything but that. That whole war has been PR.
But dispatching a jet to drop a 500lb bomb into a single foxhole is massive overkill.
Drones may seem like novelty items to you as weapons but so did airplanes back in WW1. They had jet aircraft 25 years later and all were designed with pencils and slide rules. Imagine where drones will be 25 years from today.
I can tell you where drones will NOT be in 25 yrs.
They will not be operating under some other laws of physics or aeronautics. You will still lift X pounds of explosives (probably still a Tritonal variant) and still generating the same sort of boom you get from 3 lbs.
Which will not destroy buildings, runways, ships at sea, or anything else war is supposed to destroy.
It’s all PR. Six Mk82s coming off the wings never really had Hollywood potential because there is nothing subtle about big craters.
You don't understand where drone technology is presently at.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gcpECjSoDRo
This all electric agricultural crop duster has a 200lb payload.
40 acres in a day? Do you realize how much recharging must be required to achieve only 40 acres in a day. They must have less than a mile of range spraying and returning, spraying and returning. It also looks large enough to require only bullets.
That tractor behind it does 1,000+ acres in a day. You have to understand the numbers.
Have a little respect for the laws of physics. This is not an engineering problem. It’s a physics problem. Numbers are everything. Not presentations.
The VAMPIRE !
Is That what the Ukes’ used to take out
A Billion dollars worth of Ruske Bombers
About a month ago?
Just a reminder folks, ...
... even if you have thousands of drone arms, ...
... you still can’t hug your kids with them ...
We need soldier drones...flying soldiers...like the flying monkeys in the wizzard of oz....
Not that I understand. I think they used small, single rotor FPV/autonomous drones... the kind we see videos of dropping ordinance into open vehicle hatches, playing with and then taking out individual soldiers, navigating through forests, navigating inside trenches and entering bunker/dugout doors.
Okay...
The Vampire looks to have Morter Shells.
Very effective Battle Field stuff.
.
The possibilities of This weapon are gonna be Game changers in many ways when you can track a bad guy and then serve a Special
Treat Where and When you like.
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Cheers
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