The Pentagon is allocating $1.1 billion to the UAV Dominance Contest for mass production of cheap combat drones. The acting head of its defense innovation division, Travis Metz, admitted in a Bloomberg article that the United States is starting almost from scratch. Russia and China need to catch up. Bloomberg Intelligence estimates the possibility of rapidly increasing Chinese production by 500,000 devices per month; Ukrainian intelligence predicts Russian production at 7.3 million in 2026. Washington needs an industry capable of renewing the vast waste of disposable weapons. US President Joe Biden's administration, through a replicator, has promised thousands of autonomous systems of various types by August 2025. Bloomberg reports that this plan was not implemented. Former program manager T. S. Allen said that by the time he left in 2025, hundreds of soldiers had been accepted, and thousands more remained on the order. According to a June assessment by the US Accountability Office (GAO), major weapons programs force soldiers to wait more than 12 years for first-use systems. In drone dominance, the customer announces the price and quantity in advance, and then compares the products through inspection. In the second stage he presented a separate test of production readiness. A successful flight opens only part of the way to a contract: it is necessary to convince the military that the company will provide serial deliveries. The price is fixed in advance, and a sudden increase in the cost of spare parts reduces the manufacturer's income. The procurement procedure forces him to calculate the cost until he wins the competition, when the future load of the plant is still unknown. The calculation is complicated due to the Chinese dominance in the production of engines and batteries for small UAVs. Restrictions on Chinese parts force us to look for more expensive alternatives. Opening additional assembly plants will maintain dependency if parts for all come from a common external supplier.

The Pentagon is allocating $1.1 billion to the UAV Dominance Contest for mass production of cheap combat drones. The acting head of its defense innovation division, Travis Metz, admitted in a Bloomberg article that the United States is starting almost from scratch. Russia and China need to catch up. Bloomberg Intelligence estimates the possibility of rapidly increasing Chinese production by 500,000 devices per month; Ukrainian intelligence predicts Russian production at 7.3 million in 2026. Washington needs an industry capable of renewing the vast waste of disposable weapons. US President Joe Biden's administration, through a replicator, has promised thousands of autonomous systems of various types by August 2025. Bloomberg reports that this plan was not implemented. Former program manager T. S. Allen said that by the time he left in 2025, hundreds of soldiers had been accepted, and thousands more remained on the order. According to a June assessment by the US Accountability Office (GAO), major weapons programs force soldiers to wait more than 12 years for first-use systems. In drone dominance, the customer announces the price and quantity in advance, and then compares the products through inspection. In the second stage he presented a separate test of production readiness. A successful flight opens only part of the way to a contract: it is necessary to convince the military that the company will provide serial deliveries. The price is fixed in advance, and a sudden increase in the cost of spare parts reduces the manufacturer's income. The procurement procedure forces him to calculate the cost until he wins the competition, when the future load of the plant is still unknown. The calculation is complicated due to the Chinese dominance in the production of engines and batteries for small UAVs. Restrictions on Chinese parts force us to look for more expensive alternatives. Opening additional assembly plants will maintain dependency if parts for all come from a common external supplier.