General Dan Caine, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, today warned senators that “the low barrier to entry created by affordable, ubiquitous unmanned systems” has put their potential for mass use in the hands of “adversaries, rogue actors, and violent extremists.”
The Trump Administration is currently asking for $2.4 billion for “drones” as part of a $67 billion “urgent” call for supplemental funding sent to Congress on June 24, along with $4 billion for “Airborne Moving Target Indication and Space Data Network Backbone.”
Testifying in front of the Senate today (July 21) about the fiscal 2026 supplemental funding request, Caine warned [pdf] that “rapid advancements in AI and autonomous systems deliver critical technological advantages to our national defense and simultaneously introduce unprecedented strategic vulnerabilities…to include right here at home.”
Tyler Rogoway, founder of defense news sight TWZ.com commented: “Talk about late to the game. The fact that this is even needed to be stated in a congressional hearing is nuts. The services have been chronically damaged by near-sighted leadership with dated ideas of warfare. They only do anything once the threat has arrived and they are behind by default.
He added: “[This] has to change.”
We need $1.5 trillion dollars
Caine added: “I have come today to ask for your help and your support. America’s armed forces need $1.5 trillion dollars to meet the military challenges of the future.” (That’s the War Department's fiscal year 2027 budget request.)
Rob Lee, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute,, commented on June 28 that having spoken to a “few” Ukrainian brigades about their FPV [first-person view drone] expenditure, he had learned that “one is using approximately 50 FPVs per day (it was 100 earlier this year in a more intense direction), another said up to 100, and another said 90-110. But they are primarily facing small infiltration groups.”
Lee added on X that it “can take 150 FPVs or more to stop a platoon to company-sized mechanized assault, and the demands would likely be higher in a non-positional fight.”
Scalable FPV training and even C-UAS training is being blocked in many Western capitals by the fact that they “have a potentially high accident and equipment failure rate, due to a high training burden” as RUSI’s Rob Tollast noted last year, adding that in line with current rates of FPB loss in Ukraine… British and US… procurements would only last several days.”
The Washington Post today reported that the Pentagon's urgent budget shortfall is "caused largely by the war in Iran, with some critical lines of funding set to run out within weeks even as President Donald Trump escalates the conflict with Tehran, according to lawmakers and current and former U.S. officials."
