How to Lose the Drone War
American Military Doctrine Is Stifling Innovation
Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia Macdonald
July 31, 2025
JACQUELYN SCHNEIDER is a Hargrove Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, and an affiliate with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
JULIA MACDONALD is Director of Research and Engagement at the Asia New Zealand Foundation and a Senior Fellow at the Victoria University of Wellington’s Centre for Strategic Studies.
Only a decade ago, the United States was the world’s leading drone innovator, flying Predators and Reapers to target and kill terrorists in faraway countries. But as Israel, Russia, and Ukraine have recently demonstrated in dramatic campaigns, another drone revolution has begun. Where once drones were expensive and remote-controlled for targeted strikes and strategic surveillance, now they can be procured for as little as a few hundred dollars and perform a wide array of missions, from scouting the battlefield to delivering blood and medicine to injured troops on the frontlines.
Militaries all over the world are experimenting with this new generation of drones in every aspect of combat. Israel and Ukraine, for example, used first-person-view drones to attack inside enemy territory. Russia’s volleys of one-way attack drones, missiles, and guided bombs have targeted Ukrainian power and manufacturing facilities. On the frontlines in Ukraine, both Moscow and Kyiv are using small drones as well as loitering munitions to destroy troops, tanks, and support equipment while relying on the same unmanned aerial vehicles to resupply, triage casualties, and identify approaching enemies. These drones are no longer operated from afar but embedded into trenches or smuggled deep into an adversary’s territory.
The United States has largely missed this revolution in military technology. Although Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has promised to “unleash American drone dominance,” so far the United States’ drone arsenal remains dominated by the larger, more expensive systems it pioneered a decade ago. New drone programs such as the air force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft or the army’s Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance are still in prototype and far from cheap. The air force’s CCA is estimated at $15 million to $20 million per unit; the army’s much smaller drone will still cost between $70,000 and $170,000. Even if the military bought more drones than it currently plans to, it is unclear whether U.S. companies could produce anywhere near the approximately 200,000 drones that Ukraine has been using monthly.
To take advantage of the drone revolution, it will not be enough for the United States to focus on building capacity—more funding, more production, faster acquisition. The country’s civilian and defense leaders will have to more fundamentally question the ideas that have long shaped the U.S. military and its campaigns. The United States’ delay in adopting the new generation of drones is a product of strong convictions that it acquired over the past 60 years of fighting wars: that it could, and should, leverage remotely operated technology to win quick conflicts fought from a distance. The United States believed that it could rely on relatively expensive drone technology to save pilots’ lives, deliver real-time intelligence straight to decision-makers, and enable precision targeting.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-lose-drone-war
