Exclusive investigation: We tracked billions in Pentagon drone spending

Exclusive

Friday, January 16, 2026

We tracked billions in Pentagon drone spending. As John T. Seward reports, war is changing.

Small drone spending has quadrupled here in the U.S. since the war in Ukraine began.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Pentagon has spent $4.7 billion on small drones across dozens of American companies.

In 2022, the Pentagon spent $398 million on small, unmanned aerial systems.

In 2026, Congress just authorized an additional $1.7 billion of spending.

I talked to Obviant, a Virginia-based firm that uses data analysis and artificial intelligence to track military spending. We collaborated on this to understand where this money is going, how it’s being spent, and what it’s actually buying for the U.S. military.

I’m John T. Seward, Defense and National Security Correspondent for Threat Status at The Washington Times.

We dug into how the U.S. military is responding — and spending — to seeing drone warfare in Ukraine.

What I found is that the Pentagon isn’t just buying more drones. It’s fundamentally changing how it develops, tests, and deploys them while drastically ramping up funding.

A single soldier can carry a drone in their backpack, launch it from a trench, and destroy a multi-million dollar tank. That’s not theoretical. That’s what’s been happening in Ukraine for the past three years.

It’s not just tactical. Ukraine has used these drones to strike deep inside Russia, hitting oil refineries, military infrastructure, and even destroying bombers at airbases hundreds of miles from the front lines.

As the conflict in Ukraine expanded, the Department of Defense brought together uniformed military experts from various different fields to study what was happening on the battlefield.

SPECIAL COVERAGE: Drones Unleashed

For nearly a year, they analyzed the evolving tactics using Ukraine as a live case study.

And a clear gap became apparent.

The U.S. military’s drones were focused on high-level surveillance, predators, reapers, systems that cost millions of dollars and provided intelligence from 20,000 feet up in the air.

The development of smaller and expensive drones for ground forces hadn’t yet been a consideration.

But then last year, Ukraine conducted Operation Spider’s Web. They released small drones deep inside Russian territory, remotely launched from nondescript shipping containers.

The operation targeted four air bases and destroyed more than 40 planes, including bombers that have been conducting long range strikes against Ukraine.

The results were devastating for the Russian military.

Kateryna Bondar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies described it as an attack against “the backbone of Russia’s long-range strike and aerial surveillance capabilities.”

U.S. military officials and members of Congress saw that as a turning point.

They had already been focused on trying to increase drones and small drones in the service, but now it was critical.

They started each year in Congress to increase spending of drones-focused programs.

In 2026, Congress decided to spend $1.7 billion. The vast majority of that money, $1.3 billion, is going to the U.S. Army.

And when you zoom out from across the past three years, the total investment is even more dramatic.

The man responsible for closing that capability gap is Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. President Trump calls him his “drone guy.”

At the Association of the United States Army Conference, Driscoll said drones “will dominate 21st century warfare.”

He described the lag and military innovations as a “deep chasm,” saying that between the available commercial technology and what actually is in the hands of soldiers is a huge gap.

Driscoll is leading the charge from inside the Pentagon and his programs fall directly in line with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unleashing U.S. military drone dominance directive, which is backed by the White House.

The drone dominance initiative, an additional $1 billion plan, is having its first industry deadline very soon.

Companies’ submitted solutions will be tested and compete for an order of 30,000 new small drones expected to come from the military in February.

To understand what the military is actually buying with all this money, I want to walk you through two concrete examples.

These aren’t theoretical future systems. These are drones that are already under contract, already being fielded and represent two very different approaches to the problem.

The first is from Skydio, the X2D and X10D.

This is the military’s version of Skydio’s commercial drone, and it’s part of the Army’s short-range reconnaissance program. It’s a quadcopter-style drone, something you might even be familiar with, that a soldier can launch from their backpack to get eyes on the battlefield.

The original version, based on the X2D model, first went to troops in 2022. Now Skydio has upgraded to the X10D, smaller, more capable, better cameras.

The current contract is worth $46.8 million and can grow to $100 million before Congress needs to authorize more funding.

This is the reconnaissance side of the equation. Small, portable, designed to give infantry units the same kind of overhead view that used to require a helicopter or a much larger, more expensive drone.

The second example is completely different. SpektreWorks, an Arizona-based defense company, is building the U.S. military’s first one-way attack drone.

The FLM 131, and its newer variant, the FLM-136, are designed to mimic the capability of Iran’s Shahed drone, which has been used to devastating effect by both Iran and Russia.

The Pentagon calls them attritable, systems cheap enough that losing them in combat is acceptable.

This month, U.S. Central Command announced that a squadron of the FLM 136 drones is already deployed.

They’re calling it Task Force Scorpion Strike, and it’s operating in the Middle East right now.

SpectreWorks has pulled in $34 million in contracts for the earlier FLM-131 model, the new FLM-136 will add to that as the development comes under formal contract authorization.

This is one of the first examples of the new procurement process moving equipment from concept to a combat theater at speed.

And that speed is the whole point. The traditional defense acquisition process takes years, sometimes decades, to field an entirely new system.

What’s happening now is fundamentally different and tries to keep up with that drone technology.

Rather than spending billions on a single, highly complex design and wait for it to be perfect, the Pentagon is funding dozens of companies simultaneously while testing solutions in the field and scaling up what works.

The Army is even building its own production capability.

Programs like Sky Foundry are attempting to produce thousands of drones per month using 3D printing and rapid manufacturing methods.

Undersecretary Mike Obadal visited one of these facilities in December. He told the Congressional delegation that he was with that the program was “nothing a few months ago.” Now it’s an active Army program.

Representative Pat Harrigan, a former Army Green Beret, who now sits on the House Armed Services Committee, put it more bluntly. He said “China and Russia are flooding the battlefield with millions of drones while America has sat on its hands.”

Well, not anymore.

Congress’s spending plan for 2026 shows no signs of slowing down this investment.

The money is flowing, the contracts are being signed, and the systems are being fielded.

But here’s the thing. It isn’t yet clear if the drones that the U.S. is purchasing actually make a difference on the battlefield.

We’re spending billions on a bet that worked in Ukraine and will hopefully work for American forces, but we’ll have to wait and see if that bet pays off.

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We work to bring you all the news that’s coming from Washington and around the world.

For the Threat Status team at the Washington Times, I’m John T. Seward.

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