Ukraine burns through small drones like belts of ammunition — fed, fired, and reloaded. Piloted from behind the front lines, drones hunt on the battlefield. This summer, Ukraine’s drone production increased 900 percent to 200,000 per month from 20,000 the previous year. Costs, too, are ammunition-like: reconnaissance and first-person view drones cost in the low thousands, akin to 120mm mortar rounds and far cheaper than a $200,000 Javelin anti-tank missile. Despite limits to drone performance, the United States will certainly need more drones than it has now. Acquiring, maintaining, accounting for, and delivering drones exceeds what the U.S. Army’s supply system can do.
Fortunately, the Pentagon has opened the door to a new approach. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated that “Small [aerial drones] resemble munitions more than high-end airplanes.” He then directed the services to treat small drones as consumables and to “modify or delete” policies that slow procurement, testing, training, and fielding. The Army has taken these directives seriously. The Army Transformation Initiative explicitly aims to change how the Army fights, trains, organizes, and buys, while the new SkyFoundry effort will produce 10,000 small drones per month. Drone-filled Pelican cases will stack up fast without a day-to-day execution model inside the Army that turns consumable intent into routine practice.
Luckily, there is already a system built for mass turnover and accountability: the ammunition enterprise the Army runs for the joint force. The Army and Defense Department should first designate small aerial drones as conventional ammunition under the Army’s lead and then ensure their availability in peace and war through the ammunition system. Here, we focus on the small, rucksack portable quadcopters and first-person view drones launched by hand. As Europe-oriented Special Forces officers who have fired a lot of ammunition and lead one of the best drone detachments in the Army, we have a hunch this could work.
The Miraculous Army Ammunition System
Drones are hard for the Army right now. Senior leaders say to treat them like munitions, but units still buy and maintain them with operational funds, track them like gear, and fix them with ad hoc parts purchases. Historically, once a drone was lost or destroyed, removing it from the books triggered a painful property loss investigation. No squad leader should spend a Tuesday night writing a loss memorandum for a drone meant to be lost. While recent initiatives have helped remove this administrative burden, they will not suffice when the Army has a million drones. Instead, treating drones as the munitions they are offers a ready-made way to forecast, draw, fly, and turn in drones in both training and war.
Javelin live fire training shows how the ammunition system works from the unit’s point of view. Weeks out, the detachment translates its training plan into rounds authorized by the Standards in Training Commission. Through the Army’s ammunition forecasting system, the detachment requests the specific Department of Defense identification codes for Javelin missiles and associated components. On issue day, the unit checks seals, stamps paperwork, and draws authorized ammunition by identification code and production lot.
When the detachment heads to the range, they bring their command launch units and draw missiles and batteries from the ammunition holding area. The Javelin command launch unit is durable equipment, maintained by the unit and on their hand receipt. Missiles are expendable and arrive crated, protected against the elements and transport hazards. Before a shot, the gunner unpacks the missile and inserts a single-use battery that powers and cools the seeker. After firing, the team records what was expended, separates any misfires for the ammunition inspectors and explosive ordnance specialists, and turns in dunnage — excess rounds, residue, and packing material — for reissue or disposal. Despite the $200,000 price tag, there is no investigation for normal use. Every step is auditable. This is exactly the accountable, loss-tolerant loop that small, consumable drones need.
Put small drones through this same system and the unit-level headaches disappear. Leaders would plan drone use based on their annual allocations, request drones by code through the ammunition forecasting system, draw the consumable drones with their other ammunition, and then expend or return them without drama. For the unit, this collapses everything into a familiar process. For the Army, it folds today’s ad hocdrone logistics into the predictable, scalable ammunition system.
Forecast, Issue, Fly, Turn In
Adding drones to the ammunition system should not be hard. Treat the airframe and payload kit as ammunition. Keep the controller and any launch gear on the unit’s property book. Units then forecast, draw, fly, and turn in drones alongside rifle rounds and smoke grenades.
This change will require thinking of drones in roles, rather than brands. Today’s headlines focus on the latest Skydio or Neros drones, but this is not how the Army fights. Role-based drone families should each have their own identification codes: a reconnaissance bin for small quadcopters that scout and spot, first-person view drones for training and attack, and others. Units already experiment with new ammunition types under experimental identification codes, so this system can accommodate cutting edge systems or new families as well. Then, ship these drones in weatherproof cases and handle their batteries like the Javelin’s. Once the families are set, the next step is standardizing how we fly them.
Standard drone controllers must allow platoons to swap dead drones in minutes. We’ve watched faulty rotors and bad fiber ground drones unexpectedly at takeoff. Common controllers must talk to any issued drone, connect quickly, and tie into the widely issued Tactical Assault Kit phones and software. Developers will need to keep that software and interface stable so units can refresh airframes rapidly without recertifying controllers.
Moving drones to the ammunition system does not mean that every training moment requires an ammunition drone. Virtual reality and desktop drone trainers are inexpensive and available for your home computer. Units could also buy low-cost training quadcopters and installation training centers could have them on hand for units to draw alongside rubber rifles or practice Claymore mines. As with all training, a crawl-walk-run progression through virtual and live exercises controls costs and maximizes effectiveness.
This approach will also help the drone industry by making demand predictable. Unit authorizations flow through the Army’s ammunition system into regular draws at installations across the Army. Factories see steady orders, tool capacity, and stabilize quality.
Some might object to this approach on the grounds of the pace of innovation or cost. However, the ammunition approach solves the pace of change problem. The Army should start with small tranches and iterate often. Then, by improving accountability and resupply, the Army unlocks live repetitions — the only reliable way to grow operator skill. Annual allocations also help contain costs. Commanders get ceilings up front, the ammunition forecasting system provides transparency, and predictable demand tames price volatility and improves quality over time.
Treating small drones as ammunition creates a simple, auditable loop — forecast, draw, fly, turn in — that gets capable drones into soldiers’ hands and aligns peacetime training with wartime use.
Treat Drones as Ammunition
The Army can start this now. First, the Army should add drone lines to unit annual allocations, starting by adding drones to squad and platoon level tasks. Second, the ammunition enterprise should stand up role-based drone families starting with reconnaissance and first-person view drones as they roll out of the SkyFoundry. Third, the Army could pilot this at posts with transforming-in-contact brigades, which have experience with small drones. Together, these changes will ensure that suppliers get predictable demand, units process a single piece of paperwork instead of a property loss investigation, and the Army scales drones through the ammunition system it already understands.
As an additional benefit, this approach is agnostic to other drone debates. Treating drones as ammunition is still an improvement if the Army expands drone-related occupational specialties. Second, this approach opens the door for other families of drones. The war in Ukraine continues to demonstrate the value of ground and maritime drones. The ammunition system could handle them as well. Finally, there may be questions about whether to classify larger, more complex one-way attack drones as ammunition or property. The ammunition system currently handles missiles as expensive and complex as the $4 million Patriot, so treating drones as ammunition could handle either approach.
Small drones are ammunition. The Army should treat them as such.
Zachary Griffiths commands 4th Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne).
Jeff Ivas commands the Advanced Technical Operations Company in 4th Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne).
The views and opinions presented here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army or any part of the U.S. government.
**Please note, as a matter of house style War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.
Image: Sgt. Chandler Coats via DVIDS