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Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year
- tencentshill 6mo agoReminder: The Trump family has direct involvement in drone companies https://apnews.com/article/trump-sons-powerus-drone-interceptors-iran-missiles-1d8d858fdad5104a56e4438994093594 https://apnews.com/article/trump-sons-powerus-drone-intercep...
- cyanydeez 6mo ago>Reminder: The Trump family Do you really need to go past that. They're like a "trump" card for the grift economy.
- blackjack_ 6mo agoYep. Unfortunately in 2026 if you look in the news at the US government spending and see a very big number, it is probably self-dealing / corruption to the Trump family.
- jimt1234 6mo agoBut Hunter Biden said "the big guy" in an email - that's the corruption we need to be talking about!!! /s
- mring33621 6mo agoholy shit!
- ranger_danger 6mo ago> Funding tied to the little-known Defense Autonomous Warfare Group spans procurement, research, training and sustainment Someone really wanted to name a department DAWG.
- andrewstuart 6mo agoDoesn’t seem anywhere near enough. All future and present conflict is fundamentally based around drones.
- neaden 6mo agoI'm not sure how true that is. Sure it's what we're seeing in Ukraine right now with both sides using them a lot, but my understanding is that has to due with the fact that neither side is able to get air superiority with conventional aircraft. The same reason Iran is using a lot of drones now. It doesn't seem like the US would be in a conflict where they don't have air superiority. Now I would agree that the US military can still find uses for drones, and that many of the people it fights will have a large usage of drones, but I don't think it's fair to say all conflict will be based around them.
- cco 6mo ago> The same reason Iran is using a lot of drones now. It doesn't seem like the US would be in a conflict where they don't have air superiority. Hmmm, this sentence appears to be a paradox? Is the US not fighting Iran right now? Iran has a very weak air force and the US claims air superiority, yet Iran is using a lot of drones. I think your comment proves GP's point, regardless of traditional air power, drones will feature heavily in any conflict.
- boc 6mo agoIranian drones have done nothing to prevent the US and Israel dropping gravity bombs en-mass over their capital right now. JDAMs and unguided munitions are still far cheaper for the explosion size than any drone today. That's not the situation in the Ukraine war on either side. The US has used one-way "drones" since the 80s or earlier. The entire Gulf War in the early 90s featured a ton of tomahawk cruise missiles. The only real change is that the new shaheeds are way cheaper, slower, and smaller, but can be spammed in larger numbers.
- anigbrowl 6mo ago
- zethraeus 6mo agoAnd they bought three new drones!
- Aboutplants 6mo agoThe most surprising thing here is that the US was previously only spending $225 Million on drones when it’s been fully apparent for the past decade(s) that drones were the future of warfare.
- l5870uoo9y 6mo agoTook a war to realize this.
- kylehotchkiss 6mo agotwo wars
- readitalready 6mo agoTook getting their asses handed to them in a war to realize this.
- scottyah 6mo agoIt didn't make sense to physically stock up on them before. It was mostly research, prototyping, comms infrastructure, software for swarms, AI piloting, ground control, etc. The next phase of building factories and manufacturing tooling/capabilities is a little bit concerning.
- GerryAdamsSF 6mo agoSimple DJI style drones employed en masse in Afghanistan would have been helpful for a variety of tasks. I cannot see any reason, over than oversight and a lack of imagination, why something useful in Ukraine in 2022 was not feasible or useful in 2017 by the USA. We already used drones quite handily well before that time frame but in a much more limited manner in a different form factor.
- cosmicgadget 6mo agoCombat in Ukraine is, as I understand it, somewhat like WWI with long lines of contact that only shift slowly. So you have a good idea that if you point your drone in a given direction, you'll find an enemy tank or trench. For Afghanistan it seems like high-flying, capable, armed drones were a better option for that type of conflict.
- hnthrow0287345 6mo agoMisleading title: this article says it is seeking a budget increase, not that it's been approved >The funding request, a dramatic surge from roughly $225 million a year earlier, signals a major shift in how the U.S. military plans to fight future wars, accelerating a move toward large numbers of lower-cost, AI-enabled systems. The merits of this ask within this insane administration basically means nothing IMO. Hegseth could ask for cybernetic ponies with beer coolers and I wouldn't be surprised.
- WarOnPrivacy 6mo ago> this article says it is seeking a budget increase, True. An increase to $1.5T by the looks of it. https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/politics/3882126-pentagon-unveils-historic-15-trillion-defense-budget-featuring-golden-fleet-and-drone-dominance https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/politics/3882126-pentag...
- angry_octet 6mo agoYes it's totally insane to jump $500B, and no they cannot spend it in one year. Most of the money will go towards systems development and production spanning years. And lining the pockets of Trump bros. We're seeing the total dissolution of Congressional control of spending and oversight. They'll get the money and spend it as they please.
- johnea 6mo agoBut, but... What about Tom Cruise... on the flight deck... with his bomber jacket!!! This is... UNAMERICAN!!! p.s. This comment is sarcasm. For the unmitigated reality, please refer to your 1950s "duck and cover" propaganda...
- BugsJustFindMe 6mo agoIt would cost less to provide free breakfast and lunch to all public school students in the US, but that might actually improve the country's future instead of blowing things up.
- kybb4 6mo ago"Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?"
- tptacek 6mo agoWe spend drastically more money than this on education; it isn't even in the same ballpark. People get tripped up about this because the funding comes from different taxing bodies (most education funding is state and local) --- but all taxation is linked. We also couldn't fully fund free school meals for this sum, this sum is an ambit claim by the administration not a budget, and a large component of this funding request is for capital expenditures, not ongoing operational expenditure. The (larger) school meal funding dollars would have to be paid regularly.
- BugsJustFindMe 6mo agoPlease don't compare the entirety of the US education system against an incremental fragment of military spending as though that isn't a completely bogus evaluation. We spend just as much on the war machine if not more. We're talking about an incremental fragment of the US military budget. It's fair to compare it to an incremental fragment of public wellness that would cost less and have profound impact. > and a large component of this funding request is for capital expenditures, not ongoing operational expenditure Oh, of course. You're right. I forgot that drones have zero operational costs and that military spending will decrease next year instead of increasing again and again and again like always.
- tptacek 6mo agoPut real numbers to this. We spend well over a trillion dollars on education. Also recognize the falsity of attributing the entire defense budget to "the war machine". There are policy debates that could take you lower or (like this request) higher, but it's not like an order-of-magnitude thing.
- tristanj 6mo agoA Chinese drone manufacturer [Poly Technologies] has disclosed a massive government order for almost a million lightweight kamikaze drones, to be delivered by 2026 https://defence-blog.com/china-places-massive-order-for-kamikaze-drones/ https://defence-blog.com/china-places-massive-order-for-kami... https://www.warquants.com/p/one-million-suicide-drones-with-chinese https://www.warquants.com/p/one-million-suicide-drones-with-...
- tim-tday 6mo agoChinese leadership has instructed their military to be ready for all operations for reunifying with Taiwan by 2027. I can only think of a short list of options a military could provide for that. A million drones would feature high in any such plan.
- Aboutplants 6mo agoMy only hope is that as we flippantly give hundreds of billions of dollars to defense, at some point in the near future a few hundred billion dollars for actual infrastructure or education won’t seem like all that much.
- carabiner 6mo agoDrones killing drones. No lives at stake any more. Like burning piles of money on the sidelines until one side runs out.
- fastball 6mo agoSurely that is better than burning piles of bodies?
- dmix 6mo agoThey refuse to spend less in other areas, which is the big reason why they haven't already solved the glaringly obvious drone problem. Not surprised they just want to throw more money at a new program instead of stepping on anyones toes in the other branches.
- i_love_retros 6mo agoIf only the regular folk could rise up and take back their tax money and spend it on something that collectively helps them like universal healthcare. It's so lucky for the crooks running the country that the regular folk haven't thought of that!
- cosmicgadget 6mo agoThey had the opportunity but decided a president that would appoint Hegseth and two houses of congress from the same party was a better idea. We will see how it works out for them.
- avazhi 6mo agoThey saw what’s happening in Ukraine and then got firsthand knowledge with the Shaheds.
- SimianSci 6mo agoI see drones as more of a side-affect to the new era of warfare we are in. The more powerful your economy, the more autonomous weapons you can create and eventually deploy. Manufacturing capacity and economic resiliancy are becoming far more important than a nation's ability to equip and train its military. The alarming part of this to me is that this heavily implies that wars will be decided more by who can successfully destroy their adversary's economy, than who can take and hold points of strength. Holding a city with an entrenched military doesnt matter much when there is still a factory deep in enemy territory producing the next wave of attacks. The incentives for targeting non-combatant civilians is rising at an alarming rate.
- chung8123 6mo agoIt feels like the drone factories should be targetable and who controls that may control a war.
- ASalazarMX 6mo agoUkraine has shown that a drone factory can be made on any old building, it's not like they need huge machines. Would you carpet bomb all usable buildings? Cheap drones as a defensive weapon make war way more costly to the aggressor.
- chung8123 6mo agoCheap drones have made war more expensive for people that care about where they inflict the damage.
- ASalazarMX 6mo agoNo, they made war expensive for people that are used to overwhelmingly superior but expensive military force. Drones are perfectly capable (even excel at) surgical strikes, and if the enemy destroys a $1,000 drone with a $100,000 missile, it's still a win for the drone.
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- nullocator 6mo agoThis should be a massive wakeup call to anyone who believes the ~$500B-1T per year "defense" tax burden placed on U.S. citizens for the last 20 years is keeping them safe. Apparently it wasn't until Ukraine+Iran that the most sophisticated and well funded military in the world realized that cheap drones and missiles weren't just the future but they are the present. We've been getting raked over the coals by these defense contractors and I'm guessing we probably have no idea how far down are pants actually are. And the response: 1.5x the budget and unboard a new generation of corrupt defense contractors who will sell the american military and people more shit tier products at top dollar.
- 9x39 6mo agoIt could also be that the tide is changing and we did have the security ROI until cheap drone tech emerged to push us to a new gen of warfare. For example, there is still a stable petrodollar, there are 11 carrier battle groups and 70 nuclear subs out there, there is an experienced US military capable of force projection. These are a few random metrics from a casual observer, and we seem to get more out of spending than some rival countries.
- throw0101a 6mo ago> Apparently it wasn't until Ukraine+Iran that the most sophisticated and well funded military in the world realized that cheap drones and missiles weren't just the future but they are the present. As important as drones (short- and long-range) are in the current conflicts, it's not like Ukraine isn't using tanks or isn't asking for fighter planes (and non-cheap Tomahawk missiles). * https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/europe/ukraine-sweden-gripen-fighter-jets-intl-hnk-ml https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/europe/ukraine-sweden-gripen-... On this general topic, the Baltic Defence Review channel just posted the video "1 Tank or 5,000 Drones: What Would You Choose?": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLJz5dva5qY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLJz5dva5qY I'm not sure it's "either-or", but rather "both-and".