The House Armed Services Committee will debate the package Tuesday as part of a process called reconciliation, which allows the party with a congressional majority to fast-track legislation without risking a filibuster. House Republicans expect to pass the bill in May and then send it to the Senate for approval.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., called the proposed investment “historic.”

“Our defense industrial base has weakened. America’s deterrence is failing and without a generational investment in our national defense, we will lose the ability to defeat our adversaries,” Rogers said in a statement Sunday. “With this bill, we have the opportunity to get back on track and restore our national security and global leadership.”

The Trump administration’s Golden Dome advanced missile defense shield is among the biggest beneficiaries. The bill suggests adding $24.7 billion for ground and space-based missile defense. That includes $7.2 billion to develop and buy space-based sensors, $5.6 billion for space-based intercept capabilities, $2 billion for a nascent Space Force effort to use satellites to track air-moving targets and $2.4 billion for non-kinetic missile defense effects.

The Pentagon is still crafting its architecture recommendations for Golden Dome, which will include a mix of advanced sensors and potentially a fleet of in-space interceptors designed to defeat enemy missiles. Officials have said this initial analysis phase involves determining which existing capabilities to scale and what new technologies it will need to develop.

The Defense Department plans to request funding for the effort in fiscal 2026. A bill introduced in February by Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., proposes $19.5 billion for Golden Dome in next year’s appropriations. That funding will likely be spread across new and existing programs within the Space Force and the Missile Defense Agency, which could see significant boosts to their relatively small budgets. The Space Force’s annual budget is around $30 billion and the MDA’s about $10 billion.

Aircraft and nuclear triad modernization

The bill also includes $7.2 billion to accelerate the development of new, advanced fighters and drones for the Air Force and Navy.

That air superiority funding includes $900 million to accelerate work on both the Air Force and Navy’s versions of the sixth-generation Next Generation Air Dominance fighter. The Air Force’s Boeing-made F-47 — which President Donald Trump unveiled in an Oval Office ceremony last month — would get $400 million to accelerate its production, and the Navy’s F/A-XX would get half a billion.

The collaborative combat aircraft program, the military’s effort to create autonomous drone wingmen that could fly alongside NGAD or advanced fighters like the F-35, would get $678 million. Both the Biden and Trump administrations have viewed CCAs as an important part of the U.S. military’s future airpower force, and a way to expand its reach at prices cheaper than jets flown by human fighters.

The biggest portion of the reconciliation bill’s air superiority funding would send an additional $3.2 billion to increase production of Boeing’s F-15EX Eagle II fighter. The bill also would set aside $474 million to increase the production of EA-37B Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft, which are being made by BAE Systems and L3Harris out of Gulfstream G550 business jets.

The Air Force and Navy’s efforts to modernize their respective legs of the nation’s nuclear triad would get another $13 billion. That would include $4.5 billion to accelerate the Air Force’s procurement of the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider stealth bomber, which is planned to replace the B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit fleets and be the service’s main aircraft for delivering nuclear weapons.

It also includes $1.5 billion to reduce the risk of the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, which is also to be made by Northrop and will replace the nation’s arsenal of more than 400 Minuteman III nuclear missiles. The Sentinel program’s projected future costs have grown considerably, as the effort to build the massive infrastructure needed to operate the missiles is more complicated and expensive than originally expected.

The bill would provide $168 million to speed up the production of the Survivable Airborne Operations Center program. Sierra Nevada Corp. won a $13 billion contract from the Air Force in April 2024 to build the “doomsday planes,” which would allow the president to direct forces during a nuclear war or other devastating emergency that destroys command-and-control centers on the ground.

Lawmakers also want to provide the Navy $2 billion to speed up the development, procurement and integration of the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCM-N, and $400 million to speed up the development of Trident D5LE2 submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

Shipbuilding and Taiwan aid

The bill would include almost $34 billion for U.S. shipbuilding, so far one of the Trump administration’s top priorities for the Pentagon but also a persistent issue in recent years.

Earlier in April, the president signed an executive order related to America’s maritime industrial base, requiring the defense secretary to review what authorities could accelerate America’s lagging shipbuilding industry — some 200 times smaller than that of China.

The legislation includes funding intended to increase production overall and specific Navy systems. It features $4.6 billion for a second Virginia-class submarine in the 2027 fiscal year, $5.4 billion for two more guided-missile destroyers and $3.7 billion for the amphibious assault ship program.

Submarine funding, in particular, is key as the U.S. tries to maintain pace with the timelines envisioned under AUKUS, an agreement with the U.K. to share and eventually develop nuclear-powered submarines with Australia. Even with additional funding from Congress and Australia itself, if America can’t build enough boats to share, the deal will be in jeopardy approaching key milestones in the 2030s.

Alongside these traditional systems is more than $4.6 billion in money for underwater and surface drones, which the Navy has struggled to purchase in large numbers despite rapid advances in technology.

Lawmakers also call for $11 billion to support U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. That includes $850 million in assistance to Taiwan to “protect United States interests and deter Chinese Communist Party aggression.”

Another $4 billion would fund classified military space superiority programs and $528 million for space and ground-based surveillance programs. The proposal also includes $365 million for Army exercises and campaigns in the Western Indo-Pacific and more than $1 billion for infrastructure development in the region.

Scaling munitions and low-cost drones

A further $20.4 billion included in the bill would fund a bevy of key munitions across the services — from ballistic missiles to mines to torpedoes.

Much of the funding would help surge production of weapons otherwise whipped up and down by the Pentagon’s unsteady demand, often cutting munitions to balance out budget requests to Congress.

Some $400 million would go toward accelerating hypersonic weapons development, an area the U.S. has lagged behind while competing with China and Russia.

Far more is slated for the munitions industrial base itself. There is $2.5 billion to stockpile critical minerals, $1 billion for automated munitions factories and more than $4.5 billion in grants to build out parts of the industrial base.

Together, the investments would represent a jolt into a sector that has struggled to deliver on timelines relevant to conflicts around the world, from the wars in Gaza to Ukraine. They would also help build out production of key weapons as the U.S. continues to fear it couldn’t resupply its stores of weapons in a protracted conflict with China, which has a far larger industrial base delivering munitions in much larger numbers.

Republicans also specify a need for more investment in scaling production of low-cost technologies across the Defense Department, proposing $11 billion across a number of offices and programs.

The bill would add $2 billion for the Defense Innovation Unit in fiscal 2025 — more than triple the amount of its prior-year funding. It would also add more than $1 billion each for three efforts: expanding the industrial base for small uncrewed systems, developing and buying low-cost cruise missiles and speeding up procurement and fielding of “innovative technologies.” Finally, it would funnel $500 million toward existing programs to buy attritable, autonomous systems — which likely includes the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative.

The 181-page document, obtained by Defense News, includes the standard funding tables attached to lawmakers’ annual defense spending legislation, which call for cuts to major service-led efforts like the Air Force’s drone wingmen program, Army missile procurement and the Space Force’s missile warning and tracking satellite architecture.

But the FY25 appropriations process has not been standard. The full-year continuing resolution passed by Congress may lower defense spending, but it also grants the Defense Department far more authority to decide how to spend its budget.

Because Congress failed to pass a full FY25 appropriations bill, the plans now sent to the Pentagon are not legally binding, instead serving merely as spending recommendations, according to Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“Congress ceded a significant degree of authority to the executive branch in the FY25 defense budget, and they can’t get that back by issuing a letter that basically says, ‘This is what we intended,’” Harrison told Defense News. “Good luck getting DoD to adhere to this.”

Climate change out, ‘lethality’ in

Congressional appropriators recommend a $1.2 billion cut from the Army’s FY25 request for operations and maintenance FY25, but add an additional $501 million to the service’s personnel account to cover pay raises for junior enlisted service members, according to the document.

Additional funding — to the tune of $265 million — would bolster Army procurement. Another $248.7 million would be added to RDT&E accounts.

While missiles have flowed from the U.S. to Ukraine and the Army has led the way in replacing and replenishing those munitions, lawmakers are recommending a cut of $247 million in missile procurement.

The Army’s future missile defense radar — the Lower-Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, is recommended for a $129 million cut. The most capable variant of the Army’s Patriot missile would also be cut by $58 million due to a delivery backlog. The delayed Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon program would be cut by $75 million.

Yet Congress is recommending a $100 million increase for the legacy Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, beyond just the $3.3 million the Army asked for in its FY25 budget as it works to phase the missile out and field the longer-range Precision Strike Missile. Congress proposes a $25 million cut for PrSM procurement and another $10 million for the Army’s pursuit of a second variant.

Certain vehicles buys would also take a hit if the Army took the congressional recommendations. Lawmakers recommend slashing Armored Multipurpose Vehicle procurement by $134 million. The document contains an increase for the Paladin Integrated Management System by $158 million at a time when the service is looking at exactly how it might modernize its howitzer fleet.

Congress also suggests a major funding boost of $248 million for a modular artillery production facility and another $41 million for Army ammunition plant modernization.

Army aviation procurement would be increased as well, to include $240 million for National Guard-bound Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft systems and another $60 million for National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.

Lawmakers recommend an injection of cash into Humvee modernization for both the active ($90 million) and reserve forces ($50 million) as well as additional $120 million for the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles, or FMTV. Congressional appropriators would also add $167 more in funding for the Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles, or FHTV.

In RDT&E funding, lawmakers cut more than $140 million deemed to be associated with climate change initiatives, including $29.5 million from the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle program and $7.4 million from a “soldier lethality technology” line. They also recommended cuts to all hybrid electric vehicle prototyping efforts in the force.

Lawmakers proposed additional funding in technology development areas affiliated with lethality enhancements.

Cuts to future Air Force programs

The document recommends a nearly $3.2 billion spending reduction from the Air Force’s original 2025 budget request.

That includes cuts of $2.3 billion from research and development funding, $1.4 billion from operations and maintenance. $130 million from personnel, and nearly $115 million from missile procurement. Aircraft procurement would receive almost $64 million more than originally requested, and “other” procurement programs would see a plus-up of about $679 million.

Lawmakers proposed a $325 million cut to the Next Generation Air Dominance program, which they didn’t justify but simply called a “classified adjustment.” This would bring funding for NGAD — the Air Force’s effort to build a sixth-generation crewed fighter that would fly alongside autonomous drone wingmen and other systems — down to $2.4 billion in FY25.

The document also breaks the high-priority drone wingman program known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft into its own line item, but also proposes trimming more than $70 million. CCAs would have nearly $487 million in funding this year if the document’s funding levels were enacted.

Travis Sharp, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who studies the defense budget, noted that CCA is one of the programs Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has indicated as a priority for funding.

“This seems to be a case where mostly everyone agrees that CCA is a promising capability, but they don’t agree with what [that] means in spending terms,” Sharp told Defense News in an email.

Funding for the Air Force’s advanced engine development programs would get another $100 million. This would be apart from the program to build cutting-edge adaptive engines for NGAD — known as next-generation adaptive propulsion, or NGAP — which would retain the original 2025 budget request’s proposed funding of $562 million.

The E-7 airborne battle management program would get an overall bump up of $189 million over the 2025 budget request. This is the Air Force’s program to acquire a fleet of up to 26 of the Boeing-made aircraft, sometimes referred to as the Wedgetail, to replace the aging E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system, or AWACS, planes.

Lawmakers want to strike $50 million in funding proposed in the 2025 budget proposal — called an “unjustified request” — for prototyping the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, or HACM. This would leave HACM with nearly $467 million in funding.

Lawmakers would also provide the services money to buy six more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters than originally requested. The Air Force would get another $196 million to buy two more F-35As, and the Navy would receive another $524 million to buy four more carrier-based F-35Cs

The F-35 program would also get a $10 million bump to improve its power thermal management system. The F-35′s Continuous Capability Development and Delivery, or C2D2, approach to developing, testing and delivering incremental improvements to the fighter will receive more than $1.1 billion in 2025.

And the document recommends providing another $200 million for the HH-60W Jolly Green II combat rescue helicopter program to buy two more aircraft than requested.

Space Force missile tracking cuts

The Space Force’s fiscal 2025 funding would drop $700 million under this proposal — a seemingly small decrease presented as the service pushes for its nearly $30 billion budget to triple amid growing threats in orbit.

The reductions include $222 million from the service’s operations and maintenance request, $147 million from research and development and an increase of about $1.4 million to its personnel account.

As the Trump administration crafts a plan to develop a homeland missile defense shield composed of advanced space sensors — a project known as “Golden Dome” — lawmakers are proposing cuts to the space-based missile warning and tracking systems that would likely make up the foundation of that system.

The proposal includes a $283 million reduction to that layered architecture, including $33 million from the Space Development Agency’s low-Earth orbit satellite constellation. Another $180 million could come from the spacecraft the service is developing to monitor missile threats from geostationary orbit and $170 million from its medium Earth orbit layer.

Lawmakers also recommend cutting $246 million from the Space Force’s classified procurement account and adding $351 million to its classified development account. While details on those funding lines are largely veiled, a large portion is used to develop counter space weapons and defensive systems.

The document lays out some potential additions for the Space Force, including $30 million for a Resilient Global Positioning System program that’s being designed to augment the current GPS fleet. The proposal would also create a new funding line for commercial services, appropriating $40 million in FY25. Lawmakers also suggest an $80 million add to fund additional satellite payload processing capabilities at the Space Force’s overtaxed launch ranges.

“When we launched Replicator, a common refrain I heard was: ‘Can it work?’ These days I’m more likely to hear: ‘Will it stick?’” said Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense.

That second question soon won’t be hers to answer.

Since she first unveiled Replicator a year and a half ago, it’s nearly become a trademark. Hicks has sat in all of the Pentagon’s major meetings on it. She’s read every story published about the program, prepared in files from her staff. And she’s called its success a referendum on her leadership.

Senior Pentagon officials interviewed for this story said the program is on schedule largely through her effort. Now, as Hicks leaves office, the question is whether it can survive without her.

Republicans and Democrats have applauded the idea behind Replicator. To compete with China, they argue, the Pentagon needs cutting-edge weapons much faster. Hence, aides in Congress and executives at drone firms said they expect it to endure — albeit with changes.

And after 16 months, many officials working on the program outside the Pentagon say the biggest change it needs is size. Hicks made the bet to start Replicator, no small feat in a risk-averse bureaucracy, they acknowledged. But without more funding and more weapons on order, it won’t reach its true promise: a military nimble enough for the future of war.

“I would like to think that years from now, we would look back and say, ‘Yes, this began with the Biden administration,” said Chris Brose, an executive at the drone and software firm Anduril. “However, the real scale that this got to was delivered by his successors.”

‘Magnitude’

By early 2023, the problem was clear.

The year before, Russia had started a war with Ukraine dominated by trench warfare, artillery and increasingly drones. Both sides were building them in huge numbers to target, spy and attack at once, known in the military as “swarms.”

But these weren’t American drones. Instead, Ukraine’s soldiers were mostly buying and then tweaking their weapons from DJI, a Chinese company controlling 90% of the consumer market. U.S. firms weren’t only behind on building the weapons; their equipment wasn’t even needed.

“We know we have a problem on the production side: that DJI has just taken off with the international market. We needed to build out — we still do need to build out — that American industry,” Hicks said in an interview.

The deputy is close to the ultimate Pentagon insider. She took her first job in the building at the age of 23. And her habits reflect its culture of productivity. Hicks regularly schedules her day in 15-minute slots, she reads books on better managing her time and she returns hundreds of pages of reading to her staff each week marked with detailed notes.

So as the problem emerged, Hicks thought about how the Pentagon, internally, could solve it. American companies were indeed making high-tech drones. But the supply was small — in large part because the Pentagon was a picky customer. The period between signing a contract and actually getting equipment to troops often lasts more than 10 years.

The issue wasn’t just for Ukraine.

Hicks had entered office saying her top challenge was China, a country so large it could outpace America’s ability to build almost anything.

“It was the magnitude of all of the things,” said Mike Horowitz, a former top Pentagon policy official involved in Replicator, who listed out China’s ability to build a range of weapons: ships, submarines, drones, missiles. “They’re doing all of them simultaneously.”

Over the course of 2023, Hicks had been visiting Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees U.S. forces across the region, to watch troops experiment and exercise with new technology. She saw the need for more weapons that could punch above their weight. And she decided that if the Pentagon wasn’t buying enough of these already, she would make it.

In August that year, she took to the stage at a conference in downtown Washington and pledged two things. The Pentagon would field thousands of affordable drones within two years. And it would learn how to buy such weapons faster along the way.

Hicks called the two-part program Replicator, named after a tool from Star Trek that can form matter from thin air.

‘WD-40′

At first, other people in the Pentagon and Congress — largely unaware that the program was coming — had different names for it. Some called it confusing. Others worried it was a flash in the pan. Overall, the consensus at first was that Replicator was a good idea but that people couldn’t tell whether it was more than that.

“We had a candid conversation” before the announcement, said a senior defense official involved in the effort with Hicks, granted anonymity to talk freely. “I said we’re probably gonna get our asses kicked for eight to nine months in the press. Are you ready?”

Part of the skepticism came from how little Hicks’ team shared about the program after launching it. Because she didn’t want the idea choked by bureaucratic thorns, the deputy announced it without a full plan to discuss it publicly. Even more, her staff wasn’t entirely sure how it would work.

“My Italian family uses WD-40 for literally everything. — it’s like you have a cut [use] WD-40. So when we zoomed out, there were all these great innovation gears [inside the Pentagon] but some of them were a little squeaky,” the official said.

Replicator was meant to make these all click into place.

Atop the effort was the Defense Innovation Unit, tasked with bringing high-tech weapons into the military. Along with Hicks’ staff, it surveyed the different parts of the Pentagon from the Army to the Air Force, asking what drones would matter most for a fight with China and what they could buy the fastest.

At the same time, the team was working with military leaders in the Pacific and Congress, which later agreed to free up half a billion dollars for the effort (the same number made it into the next defense budget, which Congress has yet to pass).

In the year since, the Pentagon has announced several systems selected for the program: mostly underwater vehicles, small flying drones and loitering munitions meant to explode on impact. This last group will make up the bulk of the program, a congressional aide said. Of the 2,500 to 3,000 systems the Pentagon plans to deliver, over half will be the Switchblade 600, a kamikaze drone.

Hicks argued these results helped change the narrative.

“Replicator really depended on having that reputational advantage internally to make it happen. Now the Hill and the press — that reputational advantage probably needed to prove out another year. I think we’ve done that by just putting our heads down,” she said.

‘Dress rehearsal’

In a meeting last fall, another Pentagon official working on the program remembers getting goosebumps. Military leaders in the room were planning a Replicator “dress rehearsal” for early 2025 — a drill meant to prove how the weapons could all work together.

“There was this moment where we all realized how real this is,” said the official. It had gone from an idea to a table of the nation’s top officers.

Since Hicks announced the program, it’s earned real staying power. Officials across Washington cite it as an example of how to jolt America’s slow bureaucracy. And military leaders in the Pacific have been happy to have someone advocating for their priorities.

Last fall, the Pentagon announced a second version of the program, this time focused on protecting American bases from incoming drones — a problem on display across the Middle East since Israel’s war began in Gaza.

But the drill this year is also a sign of the issues Replicator has yet to address. For one, the military is still deciding where to station the drones, which so far have been relatively short-range and would struggle to enter a fight. The answer is likely to put them on ships, said Adm. Sam Papapro, the head of Indo-Pacific Command, at an event last November.

Military leaders are trying to make sure the drones can resist jamming — a huge problem in Ukraine — and how to make the weapons operate in synchrony. They’re also trying to decide how to sustain the weapons, since these drones are meant to be “attritable,” the Pentagon’s version of a plastic fork and knife compared to silverware.

“We’re now going from just buying the system to actually using it in an operationally relevant environment and assessing changes we need to make,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer and analyst at the Hudson Institute, where he follows the program closely.

‘A solvable problem’

These tests won’t address the largest critique often leveled at Replicator: that it didn’t wasn’t big enough. China has huge stores of weapons, beyond what Horowitz listed earlier, and they’re growing. Thousands of relatively small drones won’t tip the military scales.

“The PRC has got 2,100 fighters, they’ve got three aircraft carriers, they have a battle force of 200 destroyers. Well, Roger, we’ve got a couple of drones,” Paparo said in November, using the common abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China.

Hicks staffers bristle at this critique. Replicator, they argue, was never meant to be the Pentagon’s only insurance program for a war with China. It was meant to teach the Pentagon a new way of doing business. Even more, it wasn’t like there were billions of extra dollars lying around for the program. Starting Replicator at its current scale was hard enough given how much the Pentagon bureaucracy can resist change.

“What Replicator did was juice the system and show that this is a solvable problem,” Horowitz said.

Indeed, Hicks and other top Pentagon officials say this effort is only one part in a much larger engine designed to get the military more advanced weapons.

In an interview last month, the head of Pentagon research and engineering explained the point by pulling out a complicated flow chart, illustrating how the Defense Department brings a new weapon on board.

“There’s the entire ecosystem. This is how we fit together. It isn’t [that] only one piece of the puzzle is important and the rest is irrelevant,” said Heidi Shyu, tracing the Replicator section of the chart with her finger.

Even critics accepted this argument: They couldn’t blame Replicator for not being something it was never meant to be. But Brose, the executive at Anduril, also said that the program’s scope should factor into its legacy. If the U.S. needed a true crash program to help defend Taiwan, or other parts of the Pacific, then Replicator may have missed the moment, even if it’s on track to meet its goals.

Still, that doesn’t mean they don’t want it to stick around. The Pentagon, at least, expects it to.

“Initiatives change names all the time,” the first official said.

Courtney Albon contributed to this story.

“Unmanned systems pose both an urgent and enduring threat to U.S. personnel, facilities, and assets overseas,” the Pentagon said in a statement Thursday announcing the strategy. “By producing a singular Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems, the Secretary and the Department are orienting around a common understanding of the challenge and a shared approach to addressing it.”

One-way aerial drone attacks have spiked in recent years, and the Pentagon has grown increasingly concerned by the threats they pose to the U.S. and its allies. For more than a year, Iran-backed Houthi rebel groups have been using small unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, to target ships in the Red Sea, and killer drones have featured heavily in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

DOD officials have said the department is taking a layered approach to defending against enemy drones, meaning the U.S. will pursue a range of capabilities to disable these systems, from electronic warfare to kinetic weapons. The military services have a number of ongoing programs to develop and field this technology.

Austin’s strategy is aligned with these and other high-level DOD efforts, including those led by the Joint Counter-Small UAS office, which was established in 2019 to coordinate counter-UAS development, tactics and training across the military services.

The strategy also closely follows the second phase of Replicator, which is focused on rapidly fielding off-the-shelf counter-drone technology. Austin, who announced Replicator 2 in September, said the Pentagon plans to request funding in fiscal 2026 and set a two-year timeline for delivering “meaningfully improved” counter-UAS systems.

An unclassified fact sheet released Thursday sheds some light on the department’s strategy, laying out five lines of effort it plans to pursue. These include: improving its ability to detect, track and characterize drone threats; launching focused campaigns to counter “threat networks”; making counter-drone defense a core piece of its doctrine, training and policy; quickly fielding counter-UAS technology and prioritizing funding for these capabilities; and placing a greater emphasis on countering unmanned systems in its force development and design efforts.

The strategy emphasizes the need for partnerships with Congress, defense and commercial industries and allies. It also pledges to create clear metrics to track its progress, though it’s unclear if those details will be publicly released.

“This strategy marks a critical next step in the Department of Defense’s efforts to counter unmanned systems, but much work lies ahead,” the fact sheet states. “Although the rapidly evolving nature of the threats posed by adversary use of unmanned systems means that the department will need to continually reassess our efforts, this strategy sets a foundation for action to meet this challenge.”

The defense technology company, based in California, debuted two versions of the drone Thursday. The first is a baseline model able to perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations, known in the military as ISR. The other is Bolt-M, a version of the drone that acts as a munition.

This second model of the drone is under contract with the Marine Corps on its Organic Precision Fires-Light program, trying to deliver loitering munitions small enough for troops to stash in a rucksack. Aerovironment and Teledyne FLIR are also competing for the program, worth up to $249 million.

Anduril would not share further details on the contract, including the number of units ordered or dollar amount. A Pentagon notice from April said the deal came with a floor of around $6.5 million and was for an indefinite delivery and quantity of systems.

“We’re looking at the next six months for the immediate deliveries that we have,” said Chris Brose, Anduril’s head of strategy. Brose said further sales will depend on direction from the Marine Corps, which is testing several systems now and will decide on a purchasing plan this fiscal year, but that he hopes Bolt can also compete for Army contracts.

The Organic Precision Fires contract is one example of the U.S. military trying to bring online the kind of small drones changing how wars are fought around the world. In particular, the war in Ukraine has been a sandbox for soldiers testing and deploying such drones in high numbers — either to scout artillery targets or directly attack them with small warheads. American drone firms, including Anduril, have sent their systems to Ukraine and kept in close contact with its military to apply lessons from the war.

Like many of the firm’s offerings, Bolt has some level of autonomy. The drone uses Anduril’s Lattice software, and in a release the firm said troops can operate the drone with a touchscreen — picking targets, how far the drone should stay away from them and then what angle it should use to attack. The ability to perform such simple tasks on its own allows troops the freedom to multitask rather than piloting the drones the whole time.

Rather than opt for a fixed wing model, Anduril built the drone as a quadcopter, able to take off and land vertically. Troops can unpack and fly Bolt in less than five minutes, the firm said. According to the announcement, it can stay airborne for 40 minutes and has a range of about 12.5 miles.

The drone can carry a payload of up to three pounds, and can shift between warheads intended to strike personnel and equipment, designed in partnership with Kraken Kinetics, based in North Carolina.

“When we say target, we’re talking targets in all domains. Obviously the mind immediately goes to striking targets on land, but we also see counter-maritime applications” and counter-air targets as well, Brose said.

The budget associated with the landmark legislation has been critical in past national security emergencies — hastening the production of everything from armored vehicles during the Iraq War to vaccines during the coronavirus pandemic. And it’s now helping surge America’s defense industry, which has shown atrophy as the country supports wartime partners in Ukraine and Israel.

But amid that effort, the Defense Production Act has become a proxy fight over the future of America’s defense industry, and how the country should prioritize the billions of dollars it’s using to rebuild it.

At issue is how much money the Pentagon wants for the act’s investment account, known as Title III, and how exactly it will be spent. For months, congressional offices have been frustrated that Pentagon officials were asking for too little and planning to invest it on projects they considered too speculative.

Those concerns went public in early August, when the Senate released its defense spending bill for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Senators would more than double the Pentagon’s request, but only if the money goes toward a list of projects outlined in the bill — an unusual step for an account that the Pentagon typically controls.

“I wouldn’t be happy with it” if the bill became law, said a defense official, referring to the prescriptive language. “Every program manager on the planet always wants more flexibility.”

Still, the official said that concerns over the Defense Production Act, which extend beyond Congress, were valid. Some of the Pentagon’s top priorities for the account are longer-term, the official acknowledged, and it hasn’t yet proven that it can keep pace with how fast the budget has grown.

This story is based on interviews with current and former Pentagon officials and multiple congressional aides, most of whom were allowed to speak anonymously to discuss sensitive budget numbers and negotiations. Defense News also reviewed closely held but unclassified documents that showed the Pentagon’s requests over time.

They described a growing and shared belief in the value of the Defense Production Act, one of the Pentagon’s few flexible accounts that can quickly help rebuild parts of the U.S. defense industry. But as that mission becomes more urgent, so too are debates over how to best accomplish it.

“You can run all the strategies [for the defense industry] you want” one congressional aide told Defense News. “All that matters is this. This is the strategy.”

‘One good game’

In essence, the Defense Production Act lets the Pentagon skip a line.

When the DOD wants to build more weapons it normally asks defense firms for a higher number, and those companies then order more parts in order to build them. The trouble with this process is twofold: one, it can take a long time to increase supply, and two, it can run into bottlenecks when there aren’t enough parts, such as ball bearings or rocket motors.

Under Title III of the Defense Production Act, the Pentagon can avoid this process. Instead of waiting for the market to activate lower-level suppliers, the Defense Department can invest in them directly.

“That account was very helpful in the ramp up for Ukraine,” said Chris Michienzi, a former Pentagon official who helped lead the department’s surge in aid to Kyiv.

In response, the Pentagon has been asking for larger DPA budgets. In fiscal year 2024 alone, defense officials requested $968 million, up around $300 million from the year before. Congress heavily trimmed that number, though, passing a little under $600 million in its FY24 defense budget, plus more in a defense supplemental this April.

The cuts came in large part because Congress doubted whether the Defense Department could handle the money.

“There’s just a shortage of people processing these projects,” said a second congressional aide.

The Defense Department has tried to fix those shortages. It’s increased the staff that handles DPA cases and created a new contracting pathway for such projects. In fiscal year 2024, the defense official said, the Pentagon executed $850 million of DPA funding — almost as much as during the coronavirus pandemic, a national emergency.

The official estimated the Defense Department can now handle at least $1 billion each year, but acknowledged they still need to prove it.

“It’s one good game, essentially,” the defense official said.

All in on biomanufacturing

Congress’ concern over the account began to grow earlier this year as the Pentagon was writing its plans to spend DPA funding.

In March, according to documents reviewed by Defense News, the DOD listed its priorities for the account in a spreadsheet. Most of the money would go to traditional areas of the defense industry: fixing supply chains, building chemical plants, powering munitions and building important parts, like solid rocket motors.

Once Congress passed its long-delayed defense spending bill in March, though, that list changed.

A category for “biomanufacturing” rose by $213 million to a total of $273 million for this fiscal year. To make room, other priorities such as castings and forgings, microelectronics and parts to build hypersonic weapons were trimmed or cut entirely.

Biomanufacturing is a broad, long-term sector, described in multiple White House and Pentagon strategies. The goal is less to build specific things than to find a new and more efficient way to build them — almost like 3D printing, the defense official said. If successful, the U.S. could be a leader in a cleaner, cheaper production method for things from the chemicals that ignite munitions to the protein powder that goes into meals for soldiers.

With the initial $60 million in spending, the Pentagon was trying to better understand what the sector could offer.

Congressional aides that spoke for this story didn’t have an issue with that goal. Instead, they argued that biomanufacturing began to displace other priorities — a complaint that grew louder with the Pentagon’s budget request for the next fiscal year.

The Defense Department asked for far less in DPA funding — $393 million compared to almost $1 billion the year before. And biomanufacturing would take up a larger share of the spending, around $250 million or two-thirds of the total budget.

“It’s not that biomanufacturing is inherently bad or that we don’t think it’s credible,” the first aide said. “It’s more that there are more urgent needs.”

The House’s defense spending bill proposed a $53 million increase to the DPA account but didn’t mention any other concerns. The Senate’s, though, entirely cut new money for biomanufacturing, while offering more than $500 million for the account in other priorities.

The Pentagon isn’t likely to cede authority on an account it usually controls. The official speaking earlier defended the smaller budget request for FY25, citing how much Congress trimmed the year before.

And despite “difficult choices” required to spend more money on biomanufacturing, the official argued, the sector remains a top priority for the administration. The Defense Production Act is also the kind of versatile account that could help grow a new part of the industrial base, the official said.

This debate likely won’t be settled until the fall, after the Pentagon and Congress regroup and reach a deal. Regardless, the Defense Department will likely to start the fiscal year on a short-term funding bill given the presidential election in November.

By that point, the Pentagon will have spent the first $60 million on biomanufacturing, the defense official said. It likely won’t be able to execute the remaining $213 million until early next year.

“If I was looking inside this investment portfolio from the outside, and I had the questions that you’re asking about biomanufacturing and execution, I would do the same thing that the [Senate] did,” the defense official said.

“You will see more of them on the frontline,” said Oleksandr Kamyshin, speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington. “That’s one of the game changers we expect in the nearest 12 months.”

Uncrewed weapons have been key to Ukraine’s self defense to this point in the war. Naval drones have afflicted Russia’s fleet in the Black Sea — which has needed to move farther east after having around 20 ships sunk or damaged. And aerial drones have become crucial for targeting and attacks on the front lines, where some 10,000 are lost every month.

Dressed in his usual black polo and fatigue-style pants, Kamyshin spoke at an event to promote Ukraine’s state-owned defense industry: Ukroboronprom. His comments followed a presentation on what Kyiv could produce on its own and where it needs help from foreign governments, defense companies and venture capitalists.

The increase in ground robotics Kamyshin predicted will come from manufacturers inside Ukraine, a sprawling network of volunteer, commercial and state-backed efforts. It also includes American companies partnering with Ukrainian firms to help improve their own kit.

Adam Bry, head of the drone maker Skydio, told Defense News in an interview last month that Ukrainian drone builders are the most advanced in the world. The land-based drones will perform a variety of missions, Kamyshin said, including demining, medical evacuation and combat itself.

Their main use, though, will be lightening some of the burden on Ukrainian soldiers fighting near the 600-mile front line. Ukraine lowered its eligible draft age from 27 to 25 earlier this year to help with some of its personnel shortages while fighting a much larger neighbor.

“The main point [is that] we try to get our people back from the front line,” Kamyshin said.

In addition, he said Ukraine’s aerial drones were already using artificial intelligence to target Russian positions and that the use of such software would expand in the coming year.

The Pentagon itself is pushing to use more autonomous as it faces a size disadvantage of its own: against China in the Indo-Pacific. In the last several years, the U.S. government has reviewed its policies on artificial intelligence and warfare, one part of the Replicator initiative — an effort to rush more drones to military leaders in the Pacific.

“We do our best to keep in mind all those ethical things, but at this point we have to work out a solution that will get more Russians out of my country,” Kamyshin said. “That’s the ethical dilemma we have now.”

Drones are one of Ukraine’s many equipment needs.

The country is still trying to source more artillery shells after a yearslong ramp up in the west. To do so, Kamyshin said, it will need two things: explosive components like TNT and money. The U.S. State Department, along with other countries, announced $2 billion in Foreign Military Financing for Ukraine’s defense industry earlier this year.

The money will help mature Ukraine’s domestic production in the long-term, but Kamyshin said it wasn’t enough.

“We are looking for another $10 [billion] to $15 billion,” he said.

CEO Adam Bry described the work in an interview with Defense News Wednesday, hours before he testified before Congress.

“I’ve never met drone users as sophisticated as the folks in Ukraine,” Bry said. “We want a team there.”

For now, the hires are in the single digits, with employees focused on engineering and customer support. Bry said he could see Skydio manufacturing drones in the country later on, but thinks building smaller components — like the equipment that helps prevent jamming — is more realistic at first.

The war in Ukraine is the first to feature widespread use of small, commercial style drones. In the last two years, it’s become a sandbox for companies around the world trying to test their equipment. U.S. firms including AeroVironment to Shield AI have sent their products to help defend Ukraine and see how they perform in intense electronic warfare environments.

That said, most of the drones used in Ukraine so far have been made in China, the world’s dominant manufacturer in the sector.

Bry went as far to say that Ukraine’s needs are driving Skydio’s product development, even when that doesn’t overlap with the U.S. government.

His company’s main defense contract is with the Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance program, which Skydio won in 2021. Defense firms are now competing for that contract’s second iteration, to be selected in 2025, and Skydio is putting forward its new X10D drone to do so.

Ukraine is also interested in that drone. Its Ministry of Interior has formally requested “thousands” of them — though Bry wouldn’t specify how many — atop the thousand or so drones Skydio has already sent Kyiv since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

The requirements laid out by the Army are similar to what Ukraine needs, Bry said, but they’re not one for one.

“This has been a shift in strategy for us,” he said. “Where there’s discrepancy, we’re prioritizing what we’re seeing in Ukraine.”

The main difference between the two sets of requirements is in resiliency. Ukraine’s biggest need is for drones that can counter intense Russian jamming. That is not what the short-range reconnaissance program has focused on to this point, Bry said.

Still his argument is that Ukraine is the “proving ground” for small drones. If they can survive there, that should be a good sales pitch for the U.S. military as well. But that’s not guaranteed, Bry acknowledged.

“It’s a risk from a business standpoint,” he said. “But I think it’s a risk worth taking.”

The batch is worth an estimated $225 million and is made up of artillery rounds, armored vehicles, patrol boats, anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems and munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS.

This last system is key for Ukraine, defending against a new offensive on Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city and less than two dozen miles from the border with Russia. In a major policy shift, the U.S. decided late in May to allow Ukraine’s armed forces to hit forces inside Russia that were preparing to attack. They can use HIMARS to do so.

But that permission is limited to these defensive strikes around Kharkiv — restrictions Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said last week that he would like to see lifted.

“Is that sufficient? No,” Zelenskyy said of the policy change.

On Friday Zelenskyy met with U.S. President Joe Biden in Paris, a day after both visited Normandy to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day. In a speech at the Thursday event, Biden affirmed the U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s defense as its forces continue to struggle against Russian attacks in the east.

“We will not walk away,” Biden said, “because if we do, Ukraine will be subjugated.”

This is the latest round of aid sent to Ukraine since the U.S. passed a further $60 billion in economic and security aid for Kyiv. The largest of those recent packages, though, is $6 billion in long-term assistance through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Much of the equipment ordered through that package won’t arrive for years.

“It’s so necessary for the feeling of our people that we are not alone,” Zelenskyy said while meeting with Biden Friday. “We are with you, our strategic partner.”

Signing the agreement on the U.S. side was Doug Beck, head of the Defense Innovation Unit, which helps the Defense Department adopt commercial-style technology.

In line with that mission, the new memorandum of understanding commits the two countries to cooperate on adopting tech that has both commercial and military uses. The main areas of focus for this work will be on maritime security and counter-drone systems, according to a Defense Department statement.

Part of the agreement will include “joint challenges” for counter-drone tech launched from ships, while another portion focuses on making systems resilient to jamming and other electronic warfare capabilities. The challenges are a way to kick-start the two countries’ work, Beck said in an interview.

The dates for each challenge aren’t set, but Beck said the goal is to start them both in about a month. The U.S. and Singapore will agree on the specific goals and criteria, and then allow companies from either country to apply. From there, the U.S. and Singapore will decide what kind of contracting tool they want to use to buy the offerings.

“That’ll yield winners that will then go into each of our systems,” he said.

These challenges resemble one held earlier this year by the U.S., the U.K. and Australia as part of AUKUS, a defense pact focused on nuclear-powered submarines and other advanced technology. The AUKUS competition allows defense companies from all three countries to compete around a problem focused on electronic warfare.

Alongside Beck, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, a security summit that draws officials across the Indo-Pacific. The event is hosted by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

One of the U.S. government’s top messages at the conference — as it has been during President Joe Biden’s term — has been linking America’s defense industry with other countries.

In the last several years there have been multiple agreements to do so. General Electric agreed last year to manufacture fighter jet engines in India for the country’s Air Force. Japan and the U.S. agreed to work together on the development of glide-phase interceptors, which are meant to counter hypersonic missiles. And under AUKUS, American and Australian defense companies are working closely together.

Such co-development has become a higher priority amid the war in Ukraine, which has highlighted issues in America’s own ability to surge production of key weapons as well as innovate against the latest challenges, including electronic warfare.

Beck said the first time he spoke with partners in Singapore was last fall, shortly after he took his current job. He cited this agreement, seven months later, as evidence of how fast the partnership could move.

“We said let’s make something happen,” Beck said.