Pentagon needs $50B for mass drone production, Hegseth says

Automatically curated summary from Army Times.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon is seeking approximately $50 billion in reconciliation funding to rapidly scale autonomous and robotic systems. Speaking at an AUSA panel, Hegseth stated the one-time investment aims to increase production of one-way attack systems to hundreds of thousands this year and millions in future years. The funding request is separate from the proposed fiscal 2027 Drone Dominance budget. Hegseth and Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle emphasized reducing bureaucratic barriers, broadening competition for non-traditional defense firms, expanding test range access, and formalizing robotics training.

Context and limitations

The excerpt notes it is not established whether the reconciliation funding cited is distinct from other budget requests or dedicated entirely to drone purchases, and production scaling targets depend on pending funding approval and bureaucratic changes.