Posted on 07/14/2025 8:12:42 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
On a patch of dirt in the vast wilderness in Alaska, a long-range drone roared like a lawn mower as it shot into the sky. It scanned the ground for a target it had been programmed to recognize, and then dived, attempting to destroy it by crashing into it. But it missed, landing about 80 feet away.
On another attempt, a drone nose-dived at launch. On a subsequent try, a drone crashed into a mountain.
These drones weren’t flown by amateur hobbyists. They were launched by drone manufacturers paid by a special unit of the Department of Defense as part of an urgent effort to update U.S. capabilities. For four days last month, they tested prototypes of one-way drones by trying to crash them into programmed targets, while soldiers tried to stop the drones with special electronic equipment.
The exercise aimed to help U.S. defense contractors and soldiers get better at drone warfare. But it illustrated some of the ways in which the U.S. military could be unprepared for such a conflict.
The nation lags behind Russia and China in manufacturing drones, training soldiers to use them and defending against them, according to interviews with more than a dozen U.S. military officials and drone industry experts.
“We all know the same thing. We aren’t giving the American war fighter what they need to survive warfare today,” said Trent Emeneker, project manager of the Autonomy Portfolio at the military’s Defense Innovation Unit, which organized the exercise in Alaska and paid for the development of the drone prototypes that flew there. “If we had to go to war tomorrow, do we have what we need? No. What we are trying to do is fix that.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has acknowledged that the country has fallen behind
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Russia also lags behind, as their drones are all made by Iran ("Shaheed").
P.S. Did the Pentagon really need to invite the NYT to this event so they could report to the world how unprepared we are?
This is why I invested in Red Cat (RCAT). We’ll see what kind of returns it brings.
We can thank the dementia patient, US president endorsed by NYT x2 -Biden
It is from the NY Slimes; it is a lie.
The USA has been a leader in drones dedicated to actual warfare use.
We need to make more but any idea that we are behind other than quantity is total BS.
Drones are far from perfect… so being all in on drones right now is not exactly prudent.
https://warontherocks.com/2025/06/i-fought-in-ukraine-and-heres-why-fpv-drones-kind-of-suck/
Probably no one does drones better than Israel, and they’re already hooked up with India for mass production. Some international trade and technology transfer to US is probably already being done.
Ukraine will be making 20 million drones of all sizes this year. Can you imagine being on the front as a Russian soldier and seeing nothing but a black cloud of drones coming at you, each armed with a warhead? Who needs expensive artillery or bombers. There are now AI drones that are autonomous and control hundreds of others. That my friend is the future and some one has made skynet a reality.
Gasp. For years, I’ve laughed at the childness, cluelessness, and complete idiocy of a NYT article. However, this time, it’s a good article. Right now, we’re more vulnerable than a Democrat listening to a CNN broadcast with regards to a conflict with any enemy possessing an assortment of drones. Drop the climate bull-Obama and let’s get brains and money to some real science.
I think small war drones is one of those areas where we didn’t need to rush into, we are watching and learning, testing and developing, and will probably leap over what the others are doing once we dive into mass manufacturing.
They’ve known this was coming for years. Corruption has kept them from spending the resources on drone research.
Too bad Elon's no longer in Trump's administration. I think DOGE should have gone after the Pentagon.
Maybe Trump told him no.
We are making plenty of drones. We’re just not talking about it. Our kids watched a fleet of them, large as coffee tables, go over their house horizon to horizon, so low they could have hit them with a goose gun.
Yup. I’m amused by the number of authors who appear convinced that we don’t have drones, largely from know-nothing sources such as the NYT. We retired the Predator in 2018 in favor of the Reaper. We’ve been at this a long time.
And you have generals in the Pentagon still focused on fighting the last war.
The US needs at least one factory capable of producing 1 million drones a year, just to be competitive with Ukraine.
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