A special unit of the US Department of Defense has hired drone manufacturers as part of an urgent program to update American military capabilities. For four days in Alaska, they tested prototypes of kamikaze drones aimed at hitting a number of targets while soldiers tried to stop them using special electronic equipment, writes The New York Times.
The training was designed to help US defense contractors and the military improve their skills in waging drone warfare, the publication writes. But it has also demonstrated how unprepared the United States can be in a conflict involving large numbers of drones.
According to more than a dozen U.S. military and industry experts, the country is lagging behind Russia and China in manufacturing drones, training soldiers to use them and developing systems to protect against them.
“We all know the same thing: We are not giving the U.S. military what it needs to survive in modern warfare. If war broke out tomorrow, would we have what it takes? No. And our job is to fix that,“ said Trent Emenecker, project manager for the “Autonomy Portfolio“ at the Defence Innovation Unit, which organised the training and paid for the development of the prototypes of the unmanned aerial vehicles being tested there.
Defence Minister Pete Hegseth, for his part, acknowledged that the country was lagging behind its rivals in this regard and announced a number of new initiatives and investments in the drone sector, promising to close the gap. In a recent video address, he cited outdated procurement rules and processes as a major reason why commanders have struggled to buy drones and train soldiers to use them.
“While our adversaries were producing millions of cheap drones, we were bogged down in bureaucracy,” Hegseth noted.
The State of Drones in the U.S. and Around the World
DJI, based in Shenzhen, China, makes about 70 percent of all commercial drones in the world—for hobbyist and industrial uses, from aerial photography to parcel delivery to weather research. Although it is a private company, its products are also available in the U.S.—and even has an official store.
However, under U.S. law, the Pentagon is prohibited from buying Chinese drones. The company declined to share exact figures, but experts believe DJI's production volumes far exceed the capabilities of any other manufacturer.
“DJI can produce millions of drones a year. That's a hundred times more than anyone else in the United States. Nobody comes close to that,“ says Bobby Sacchi, CEO of drone consulting firm NEXUS.
While about 500 companies in the United States produce drones, their combined production volume does not exceed 100,000 per year. At the same time, many of them are start-ups with no proven track record of mass production or sales.
“Everybody wants to win a big military drone contract, get a check for a billion dollars, and go to some island to live out the rest of their lives,” said Nathan Etzelbarger, head of the National Drone Association, which promotes drone countermeasures and technology.
But the Alaskan training shows how difficult it is to create your own effective drone industry. The first two days of testing have reportedly been fraught with failure. One of the drones reportedly scanned the ground for a target it was programmed to recognize, then swooped down in an attempt to destroy it by crashing into it. But it missed its target and landed about 80 feet away. On another attempt, the drone crashed immediately after launch. On its next attempt, it crashed into a mountain.
Drone consultant Chris Bonzani of Contact Front Technologies, who helped organize the Alaskan tests, added that many American drones transferred to Ukraine have failed in combat due to outdated solutions or vulnerability to Russian electronic warfare (EW) equipment.
"In Ukraine, companies that supply technology to the fighters are constantly with them, watching live what works and what doesn't," he emphasizes. Ukraine has become a center for drone production because its soldiers and engineers have been forced to master drone technology in order to survive.
Drones for military purposes
UNIAN has already reported that Western companies are stealing Ukrainian drone technology under the guise of cooperation. They then receive huge contracts for their production, despite the fact that they "have no idea" about modern military technology.
Radio electronics and communication systems expert Sergei "Flash" Beskrestnov, for his part, said that a "Shahed" strike drone could cost Russia about $500,000 or even a million.