Latest news with #Pentagon-speak
Time of India
7 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Next big arms race: Who can build the most drones nobody minds losing, America, Russia or China?
The Pentagon is tearing up its old drone playbook. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wants drones treated like bullets, not aircraft. Cheap, expendable, and everywhere. His new memo kills red tape, hands buying power to frontline commanders, and backs US-made drones over imports. Every squad will get its own drone swarm by 2027. It's a bet that the next big fight will be won not by high-end jets, but by millions of low-cost flying munitions buzzing over the battlefield. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Manufacture fast, train hard, buy American Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads From theory to trenches Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads The supply chain challenge Fighting with drones like ammunition US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wants drones to be seen for what they've really become: disposable munitions, not prized aircraft. This shift, spelled out in a sweeping new Pentagon memo, could reshape how the United States fights, builds, and trains for war for decades to order tears up the old playbook that slowed drone development with paperwork, endless sign-offs, and tangled chains of command. His message is blunt: the enemy is churning out millions of cheap drones every year — Russia alone aims for four million this year, Ukraine even more. Meanwhile, US frontline units have been forced to make do with decades-old procurement systems designed for F-35s, not the Pentagon is flipping the table. Under the new rules, small drones — Group 1 and Group 2 in Pentagon-speak — are reclassified as consumables. Think hand grenades, not stealth bombers. Commanders at the O-6 level — colonels, captains, equivalents — now have the green light to buy, test, modify and deploy these drones directly, no more waiting for approval from the top brass or the distant the core of this pivot is an industrial push. 'Our overt preference is to Buy American,' Hegseth insisted. That means direct loans, advance purchase deals, and fast-track approvals for homegrown drone makers. The goal? A home-grown swarm of cheap, clever drones designed by American engineers and AI experts. Not one or two prototypes , but overhaul rests on three pillars. First, expand domestic production. Hegseth wants American drones built by American companies. The memo demands the Pentagon lean hard on domestic suppliers, using direct loans, advance purchases and private capital to flood the force with cheap, expendable drones.'Our overt preference is to Buy American,' Hegseth writes. 'We will power a technological leapfrog, arming our combat units with a variety of low-cost drones made by America's world-leading engineers and AI experts.'Second, he wants process reform. Building drone dominance isn't just about tech — it's about speed. Past rules treated small drones like fighter jets, bogging them down with the same airworthiness certifications and NATO standards meant for billion-dollar aircraft. From now on, small drones won't need the same testing. They'll be made, modified and lost in combat — and replaced just as fast.'Drone dominance is a process race as much as a technological race,' Hegseth writes. The new approach fuses frontline needs with the factory floor. Prototypes, 3D printing, battlefield tweaks — all wants the entire procurement model flipped. 'Drone dominance is a process race as much as a technological race,' he wrote. New drones will skip heavy NATO standards when they make no sense for cheap flying bombs. No more forcing small drones to meet the same paperwork as big third pillar is training. By the end of 2026, every US Army squad must have one-way attack drones in its kit. By 2027, major training events must include drones, swarm scenarios, live-fire tests, drone-vs-drone battles. Senior officers are under orders to strip away range restrictions, expand testing grounds, and make drone use second nature.'Lethality will not be hindered by self-imposed restrictions,' Hegseth said last week. 'Drone technology is advancing so rapidly, our major risk is risk-avoidance. The Department's bureaucratic gloves are coming off.'This pivot isn't academic. In Ukraine, drones have turned trench warfare into a tech race. Cheap first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drones drop grenades through tank hatches. Commercial quadcopters spot artillery targets. More than 70 percent of Ukraine's battlefield casualties this year are linked to in the Pacific, the US faces China's vast manufacturing might. Chinese drone makers dominate the global civilian market — and parts of the military supply chain too. That's a vulnerability Washington wants closed memo spells this out. Every military branch must stand up new units, dedicated to getting drones out of PowerPoint slides and into soldiers' hands. These units will test designs, tweak them with 3D printers, feed lessons back to manufacturers and scale up production. Indo-Pacific Command gets first dibs — the clear signal is that the US is preparing to counter China's also a nod to the Replicator Initiative, launched in 2023 to push thousands of cheap, smart drones to the front lines. Progress has been slow. Hegseth's memo basically tells everyone: move this ambition depends on supply. Ukraine's small shops now churn out 200,000 drones a month. The US doesn't yet have that kind of industrial muscle for disposable drones. The memo leans heavily on private capital and domestic startups. Executive Order 14307, signed by Trump in June, aims to open more funding getting from high-level memo to warehouse shelves won't be easy. American drone makers will need parts, batteries, secure supply chains — and they'll need to do it without relying on Chinese subcomponents. The Pentagon has been burned before by drones carrying suspect Chinese new policy also blows open the way for improvisation. Frontline troops will be free to mod small drones on site, even build them from scratch if they have the right parts. The memo specifically allows military-made drones that meet the 'Blue List' of trusted components to skip lengthy bigger shift is cultural. For decades, the Pentagon treated UAVs as scarce, expensive assets. This new vision says drones are bullets with wings — use them, lose them, risk in that mindset. Small drones are easy to jam, easy to shoot down. But the point isn't perfection. The point is mass. If each squad has eyes in the sky, one drone shot down doesn't matter — another is bet is that the Pentagon can out-innovate and out-build its rivals if it gets out of its own way. Time will tell if the factory floor, the training ranges and the dusty frontlines can keep pace with the now, the message is clear: stop treating drones like prized possessions. Treat them like ammo. Build them cheap, fly them hard, lose them fast — and always have another ready to launch.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
IPO Candidate Anduril Industries Makes Military Drones -- and Shoots Them Down, Too
Privately held Anduril Industries was named after the Sword of Kings in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Established for the purpose of building fantastical, artificial intelligence-powered weapons for the U.S. military, it has at least a couple of things in common with another defense contractor with a name borrowed from Tolkien: Palantir. The biggest difference between the two companies: Palantir is publicly traded, and Anduril isn't -- so you can't yet invest in Anduril. However, Anduril has made no secret of its intention to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) sometime soon. For that reason, over the past few weeks, I've been conducting a moderately deep dive into Anduril -- who founded it, what it does, and when it might go public. Last month, for example, I surveyed every major Pentagon contract Anduril entered into in 2024, and came away with the distinct impression: Anduril is primarily a drone company. It may not be the world's biggest manufacturer of military drones. But the seven big contracts Anduril won last year are worth about $400 million in future revenue -- nearly as much as all the revenue it collected in 2023. But do you know what might make even more money for Anduril than building drones? Shooting them down. The Pentagon prefers to call drones either "unmanned aerial vehicles" (UAVs) or "unmanned aerial systems" (UASs). Similarly, when describing systems designed to counter threats from hostile drones -- to detect, track, and destroy them -- the military generally calls such systems C-UAVs or C-UASs. The public got its latest hint of how big a business counter-unmanned aerial vehicles systems might be for Anduril earlier this month when the Pentagon's daily digest of contract awards highlighted a $642.2 million contract granted to the company. Under this contract, Anduril will "deliver, install, and sustain Installation-Counter small Unmanned Aircraft Systems" at fixed locations (specifically, Marine Corps bases). In Pentagon-speak, the program will be known by the acronym "I-CsUAS". A 2022 article published on the official website of the U.S. Marine Corps noted that I-CsUAS will involve the construction of long-range sentry towers equipped with radar, optical sensors, and passive radio frequency detection capability, and utilizing Anduril's "Lattice" artificial intelligence (AI) software to identify, categorize, track, and destroy incoming UAV threats. reported that, in total, Anduril defeated nine other companies to win the I-CsUAS contract. Among those rivals was Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, maker of the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system. Anduril's bid was probably helped by the fact that, in addition to being a U.S. company, it (like Rafael) was able to offer the Marines an existing, combat-proven system that "can deliver real capability ... today" because it's already "been in service for many years ... with multiple services at multiple locations around the world" -- including U.S. Special Operations Command. Now, Anduril just needs to execute on its contract. reported last year that initial operational capability for I-CsUAS might arrive during the government's fiscal 2025 third quarter (which ends Sept. 30). Last week, CBS News 60 Minutes quoted NORAD commander Gen. Gregory Guillot discussing plans to install drone defense systems similar to I-CsUAS "inside of a year." That could still happen, but Anduril itself did not state a date for first installation or initial operational capability in its announcement. Given that the contract was only just awarded, a 2026 timeline seems more likely. When ever it starts, the Pentagon's contract announcement noted that Anduril will be working on this project through March 2035. This is an important detail for investors to keep in mind. On the one hand, $642.2 million is a lot of money -- more than all the revenue Anduril collected in 2023 across its entire business, and awarded here in just one single contract. However, this contract will stretch over 10 years, meaning its value per year is closer to $64 million. That's still a lot of money for this company, about 14% of 2023 revenue, and about 6.4% of the $1 billion revenue that Anduril founder Palmer Luckey previously said the company probably did in 2024. Put another way, winning this single contract will add 6.4% to the company's growth rate in 2025 and beyond. Moreover, should Anduril's systems perform well, that would likely lead to it landing more and bigger contracts -- perhaps many more and much bigger. Consider that, at last report, the U.S. Marine Corps had a total of 21 operational military bases in the U.S. and abroad that might need drone protection. The entire U.S. military, however, has closer to 750 military bases scattered around the globe. In that context, I'd suspect there's a lot of room for this I-CsUAS contract to grow in future years, and with it, the entire company. That's why I can hardly wait to see Anduril IPO. Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you'll want to hear this. On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a 'Double Down' stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you're worried you've already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it's too late. And the numbers speak for themselves: Nvidia: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009, you'd have $312,980!* Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you'd have $42,421!* Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you'd have $537,825!* Right now, we're issuing 'Double Down' alerts for three incredible companies, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.*Stock Advisor returns as of March 24, 2025 Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. IPO Candidate Anduril Industries Makes Military Drones -- and Shoots Them Down, Too was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
