Ukraine Builds 500,000 Strike Drones a Month—More Than the US Plans to Buy in a Year

The United States remains far behind Ukraine in mass-producing small strike drones and is only beginning the difficult process of building a domestic industrial base capable of competing at that scale, a senior Pentagon official acknowledged on July 27.

Travis Metz, deputy director and chief operating officer of the Defense Innovation Unit, told Reuters that Ukraine is expected to manufacture between six and seven million small FPV strike drones in 2026—roughly 500,000 every month.

By comparison, the Pentagon’s $1.1 billion Drone Dominance Program is expected to have ordered just under 200,000 drones in total by February 2027.

Metz, who has led the program since last fall, said creating an industry from scratch was the hardest stage.

“It’s much harder to get from zero to 200,000” than to expand once the necessary factories, suppliers, and production capacity are already in place, he said.

The Pentagon is simultaneously making that buildup more demanding by tightening restrictions on foreign components. A revised supply-chain framework adopted on July 23 states that the ultimate objective is to establish “a wholly domestic” US supply chain for small unmanned aircraft.

None of the drones entered by 19 companies in an August testing event will be permitted to use prohibited Chinese components, including brushless motors or battery packs.

That is a stricter requirement than during the first stage of the program. Metz estimated that “the vast majority” of drones purchased earlier likely contained Chinese-made motors.

“It’s an increasingly difficult thing,” he said.

Semiconductors and other harder-to-source components remain an even broader challenge for American industry, extending well beyond drone manufacturing.

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Ukraine’s experience could now help accelerate the US effort. Six Ukrainian companies invited to participate in the Gauntlet II trials at Fort Carson, Colorado, next month have already established or are preparing joint ventures with American manufacturers.

Producing the systems inside the United States will be mandatory for companies seeking future Pentagon orders.

Despite the current gap, Metz said he expects the US industry eventually to match Ukraine’s production capabilities.

“I see no reason why we shouldn’t… be the world champions of this as well,” he said.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed that Ukraine is preparing to scale its long-range drone capacity significantly, targeting ranges of 4,000 kilometers this year and up to 10,000 kilometers next year.

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