The US Army has launched a large-scale drone reform

The United States has launched a large-scale rearmament of the army with thousands of drones by canceling planned contracts for armored vehicles.

The Wall Street Journal reported on this.

Largely based on the experience of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the US Army has launched a large-scale rearmament, planning to strengthen each division with a fleet of about 1,000 drones and eliminate outdated equipment.

The first phase of the plan will involve equipping 10 divisions with unmanned aerial vehicles, which will enable them to conduct reconnaissance, strike operations, and provide ammunition logistics on the front lines.

“We have to learn how to use drones, how to fight with them, how to scale them, how to produce them, and how to use them in our battles so that we can see beyond the line of sight,” Colonel Donald Neal, commander of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry Regiment, reported. “We’ve always had drones since I’ve been in the military, but we’ve had very few.”

Daniel Driscoll, a senior Defense Department official, said that the first three brigades – formations of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers in divisions – are already equipped with some of the new unmanned systems. He expects the transformation of the remaining units to take two years.

Army units that have not yet begun to adopt the new equipment are typically equipped with a dozen long-range reconnaissance systems that were first deployed more than a decade ago.

Drones are just one area of army modernization. The media noted that the military also wants to integrate “phones, tablets, and Internet technologies” into the battlefield ecosystem, and is investing about $3 billion in the development of advanced drone interception systems and electronic warfare systems.

According to officials, the total cost of the army’s modernization will be $36 billion over the next five years. The army plans to raise the money without increasing defense budgets by cutting some outdated weapons and retiring other systems. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth endorsed the plan in a directive signed this week.

“We’re not going to ask for more money,” Army Chief of Staff Randy George stated. “We want to do a better job of spending the money we have.”

To finance the rearmament program, the Army will halt purchasing HMMWVs and suspend purchases of JLTVs, light tactical armored vehicles.

The armed forces are also terminating the contract for the new M10 Booker light tank, which, after ten years of development, has failed to meet the military’s expectations due to unsatisfactory technical characteristics. It is also planned to decommission some of the old AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.