CQ Roll Call: New bill pushes DOD to produce 1 million drones per year
Contact: Lexi Kranich (814) 380-4408
WASHINGTON, D.C.—A House Republican defense hawk wants to see the Pentagon establish a facility capable of building up to 1 million drones a year to counter mass production from China and Russia.
The newly released legislation (HR 5086) from Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., aims to push the Defense Department toward the quick development, testing and fielding of small unmanned aircraft systems — though the bill text would also allow for the expansion into other autonomous weapons systems down the line.
Harrigan, a member of his chamber's Armed Services Committee, said in a Thursday statement that the push seeks to make clear that the U.S. "will never again allow our enemies to outproduce us in the weapons that decide wars."
"China and Russia are flooding the battlefield with millions of drones while America has sat on its hands," he added. "More than 80 percent of casualties in modern war now come from drones, yet we still have no capacity to build them at scale. That failure is reckless, and it leaves our troops exposed."
The bill would create a so-called SkyFoundry program that would consist of two components: a government-owned innovation site for research, development and test; and a separate production complex for drone building, both of which would be operated by the Army Materiel Command.
The innovation center would be tasked with "integrating lessons learned from global conflicts to rapidly evolve United States small unmanned aircraft systems designs," per the language.
The legislation would also give DOD leaders the ability to leverage an expedited waiver process to speed up drone development, acquisition and production. And it would encourage the use of alternate acquisition tools to allow for rapid prototyping and fielding.
The effort comes on the heels of a high-profile but secretive Defense Department program that began under President Joe Biden's administration and sought to deliver thousands of cheap drones within a two-year window to match China's advancements in that space.
Known as Replicator, the initiative has resulted in the fielding of hundreds of uncrewed systems to troops across the military, according to recent defense trade publication reports, but little has been shared officially about the current status of the program and progress underneath it to date.
A Harrigan aide noted the bill specifically differs from Replicator in its specific focus on cheap, one-way, small unmanned aircraft, rather than autonomous systems more broadly. The legislation, the aide continued, seeks to develop a manufacturing baseline to draw from that would allow for swiftly scaling up the production of small drones.
The bill would not appropriate funding for the effort, but Harrigan's office estimates the push would cost between $800 million and $1 billion. An aide said the Trump administration plans to pay for the program with the approximately $1 billion in funding under the reconciliation package (PL 119-21) that the aide said was dedicated to the small drone industrial base.
The production facility that would be established under the legislation would need to be housed at an existing Army depot and meet a series of other requirements. It would have to have, for example, some 8 million square feet of facilities and be in a location that is within 50 miles of four states.
One location that would meet those criteria is Red River Army Depot in Texas, the aide said.
The legislation builds off of an earlier amendment Harrigan championed to the House version of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (HR 3838) that would create a SkyFoundry working group tasked with generating recommendations to improve domestic manufacturing capacity for small drones through the development of an innovation center and production facility. The amendment was adopted during the Armed Services Committee's NDAA markup in July.