How Did the World’s Most Sophisticated Military Fall So Far Behind With Drone Warfare?
The U.S. military is just getting started on transforming the way it conducts war.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hosts a drone demonstration at the Pentagon.
By Michael Hirsh
08/27/2025 05:00 AM EDT
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hosts a drone demonstration at the Pentagon on July 10, 2025. The event was hosted to demonstrate the Trump administration's initiative on Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance. | Lance Cpl. Isaac Llanez Delgado/U.S. Marine Corps
When the Pentagon announced a “joint interagency task force” in July to bring the U.S. military up to speed on drone warfare, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. James Mingus compared drones to the threat of improvised explosive devices two decades earlier in Iraq.
The drone, said Mingus, “is our IED of today” — a war-transforming technology that smaller powers could use to put big powers at a disadvantage. Ukraine has demonstrated this brilliantly over the last few years through its innovative use of drones to stymie the invading Russians. And 20-odd years ago, another nation that once saw itself as all-powerful on the battlefield — the United States — found itself flummoxed in the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan as insurgents deployed IEDs to kill or maim thousands of young Americans in a new kind of “asymmetric” warfare.
“We cannot move fast enough in this space,” Mingus said last month. What he neglected to say, however, was that the Pentagon took tragically long to combat the IED. Many within the military and Congress — among them, notably, then-Sen. Joe Biden — were outraged over nearly two years of delays in deploying the MRAP, or “Mine Resistant Ambush Protected” vehicle, to address the IED threat. The issue wasn’t resolved until a new defense secretary, Robert Gates, took over for Donald Rumsfeld in 2006. Appalled by what he called daily “funeral pyres for our troops,” Gates imposed his will over bureaucratic resistance from the Pentagon — “Hurry up! Troops are dying,” he’d tell reluctant officials over and over — and launched a crash program to send thousands of MRAPS to Iraq and Afghanistan.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/27/pentagon-drone-technology-deficiency-00525058
