JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In the wars in both Ukraine and Iran, one-way attack drones have changed the battlefield. So the Pentagon is thinking cheaper and smaller. Jay Price of North Carolina Public Radio reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRONES FLYING)
JAY PRICE, BYLINE: That sound was already familiar across the U.S. military, which for years has been fielding small drones that let front-line ground troops see, for instance, what's over the next hill or inside a nearby tree line. More and more, though, that sound is going to be followed by this one.
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)
PRICE: The Pentagon has begun a huge push to buy hundreds of thousands of small attack drones - the type that have long been the dominant weapon in Ukraine. Drones are responsible for about three-quarters of that war's casualties. This push was the subject of a recent hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Republican Roger Wicker of Mississippi.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROGER WICKER: Both the American commercial drone industry and the Pentagon are years behind the curve in producing and employing drones. Catching up is as necessary as it is difficult, but I believe we're finally on the cusp of charting a future for American drone dominance.
PRICE: In fact, Drone Dominance is the name of the Pentagon's new billion-dollar program to jump-start mass production of small one-way attack drones. It's staging competitions among manufacturers and expects to buy 30,000 of the drones in the next few months and 300,000 next year. That still isn't a lot by the standards of the Ukraine war, says Kateryna Bondar, who researches drone warfare at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
KATERYNA BONDAR: Ukrainians produce 6 million drones per year.
PRICE: She says the U.S. urgently needs large numbers of small attack drones for training and to learn how to integrate them into the way that forces fight. So think of that 300,000 as expendable.
BONDAR: You can treat them as bullets, basically. That's how they do it in Ukraine.
PRICE: She says the Pentagon's drone-buying initiative is a good first step, but just as important is teaching the troops to use them.
BONDAR: Because if you talk to Ukrainian military, they would tell you that despite all the cool software, AI and, you know, all this kind of stuff, 80% of strike mission success depends on drone operator skills. How to integrate them, how to actually fight with them - this is something valuable and it's really hard to buy for money. So there is a lot of work has to be done.
PRICE: Some units are already doing that work.
ANDREW CANNON: So more or less, the training's focused on integrating the unmanned aerial systems into realistic combat scenarios.
PRICE: Captain Andrew Cannon is a company commander with the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine regiment out of Camp Lejeune. He was speaking from a California base where his unit was doing realistic combat training to help the Marines figure out how to incorporate small attack drones, hoping to build lessons to share across the Marine Corps. His unit is using the Neros Archer, which is one of the first selected so far in the Pentagon competition. Not much bigger than a dinner plate, it looks much like the kind hobbyists use. He says the Marines using it are enthusiastic about the new capabilities it gives them.
CANNON: Ultimately, it gives us lethality and precision. It gives small-unit leaders the ability to apply force in a very controlled and deliberate way. It allows us to be very effective while reducing risk to the Marines.
PRICE: Some senators at the committee hearing spoke of the quest for drone dominance as a watershed moment in warfare, with Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal equating it to the nuclear arms race or the early days of space exploration. Meanwhile, Bondar, the drone expert, notes that other countries are continuing to advance. For instance, she says Russia, which was already using AI to automate how its drones pick targets, now has begun experimenting with fully autonomous systems that cut human operators out of decisions about what to attack. For NPR News, I'm Jay Price in Durham, North Carolina.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUN B AND STATIK SELEKTAH SONG, "CONCRETE (FEAT. WESTSIDE GUNN & TERMANOLOGY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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