OPINION:
During a House Appropriations Committee hearing in April, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll emphasized that the U.S. was learning a lot from the Ukrainian military, which has “done an absolutely amazing job of innovating.”
Recognizing Ukraine’s extraordinary development and deployment of tactical drones, the Army purchased 13,000 interceptor drones at roughly $15,000 apiece.
These drones use the Merops operating system, which employs artificial intelligence to find, fix and destroy attack drones such as the Iranian Shaheds.
The interceptor drones with Merops, which have already demonstrated impressive battlefield results in Ukraine, are now deployed to U.S. allies in the Middle East to counter Iran’s kinetic drone attacks.
In contrast with expensive missile defense systems, interceptor drones offer a more efficient and less costly alternative, and their development would not have been possible without the lessons learned by Ukraine in defending itself against a barbaric Russian invasion.
Nothing spurs innovation like the demands of modern warfare.
Former CIA Director David H. Petraeus, with whom I had the honor of serving in the Middle East and at the CIA, recognizes that this century’s revolution in military affairs is taking place on the frontline battlefields in Ukraine, which he visited earlier this month.
Mr. Petraeus, who has traveled to Ukraine 10 times during the war, has highlighted the extent to which Ukraine’s ingenious unmanned drones have so effectively undercut Russia’s manpower, military and economic advantages. According to him, the secret to Ukraine’s impressive battlefield success lies in the “overall command and control ecosystem” that integrates surveillance, targeting and kinetic strikes.
Ukraine produced 2 million drones in 2024 and 3 million in 2025.
Mr. Petraeus concluded that the battlefield lessons learned in Ukraine will form the basis for a “whole new concept of warfare” that should define future force organization and a military doctrine combining high technology, including artificial intelligence, with weapons systems.
In “Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team and the Dawn of AI Warfare,” Katrina Manson describes the advent of artificial intelligence, which corrects the problem of precision munitions receiving imprecise information.
As of 2024, the U.S. military was integrating more than 150 live data feeds from land, sea, air, space and cyber into its Maven Smart System, which uses AI and Silicon Valley software to enhance defense systems.
Ms. Manson warns of the potential for an AI arms race, in which China would rush to deploy untested and unreliable AI systems.
During a military parade in Beijing in September, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s axis of dictatorship partners, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, looked on as the Chinese military displayed its latest drone technology with AI-infused weapons and countermeasures.
Key to winning the AI arms race against China and its allies — Russia, Iran and North Korea — is the U.S. defense industrial base, which is responsible for researching, developing, designing, producing, delivering and maintaining weapons systems.
Consisting of a powerful network of private sector companies operating in the free enterprise system upon which our economic strength relies, the defense industrial base is on the hook to deliver 21st-century fast, disruptive technology, including big data, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has made AI a high priority, will need to ensure that the Trump administration continues to streamline the acquisition process by cutting unnecessary regulations and excessive bureaucracy that cut into the defense industrial base’s profit margins.
A fiscally healthy industrial base promotes investment, competition and resilient supply chains along three lines of operation.
First, the Defense Department must enable the highest level of competition for AI and other next-generation technologies. This competition attracts more entrants into the defense market, spurs innovation and reduces costs to taxpayers.
Second, the Defense Department should not hesitate to allow higher profit margins if that creates greater incentives for research and development and reduces development time. Competitive market forces, not artificially low or noncompetitive profit margins, should drive the basis for negotiating price.
Third, the Defense Department should double down on investing in cutting-edge technology such as Project Maven by expanding funding for more world-class laboratories and research facilities and nurturing the workforce of U.S. scientists and engineers on whom the defense industrial base relies.
With productive bipartisan oversight and budgeting from Congress, the Defense Department is poised to lead the U.S. to victory in the AI arms race.
Considering the threats we face from state actor adversaries as well as criminals, drug traffickers and terrorists, the stakes could not be higher for U.S. warfighters, defense of the homeland or our global national security interests.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. He can be reached at danielhoffman@yahoo.com.
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