Army Sgt. Nicholas Murphy of the 3rd Infantry Division’s Combat Aviation Brigade tinkers with a hexacopter drone that he built July 26, 2024, just before a test flight at a Hinesville, Ga., airfield just outside Fort Stewart. Murphy participated in a first-of-its-kind drone building class run by the division’s Marne Innovation Center at Fort Stewart. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

The Pentagon wants more small, cheap, easily replaced drones in the hands of troops as quickly as possible, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he is cutting red tape to make that happen.

Hegseth, dressed in a dark-colored suit, took to the Pentagon’s parade field on Thursday to record a video announcing his policies on new small drones — officially, unmanned aerial systems — and promoting his memorandum on the matter as an American Flag-bearing drone was flown to him by a service member. Hegseth said the memo would build off a June 6 executive order issued by President Donald Trump meant to boost America’s commercial drone manufacturing and integrate them into the nation’s transportation and military sectors.

“This is the future,” Hegseth said over the buzz of the small drone and the blasting of Metallica’s 1991 hit song “Enter Sandman.” “We’re in the fight. We’re in the fight to win it, and I’m never going to back down.”

Hegseth’s new policies aim to cut through bureaucratic policies that limited the military’s ability to quickly purchase and field small drones with vast capabilities ranging from gathering intelligence to dropping small supplies to troops all the way to delivering lethal munitions on enemy positions.

“Lethality will not be hindered by self-imposed restrictions, especially when it comes to harnessing technologies we invented but were slow to pursue. Drone technology is advancing so rapidly, our major risk is risk-avoidance,” Hegseth wrote. “The department’s bureaucratic gloves are coming off.”

The policy seeks to move small drones — especially lethal, one-way attack drones — into the same purchasing category as grenades and bullets, instead of classifying them more like helicopters and planes. It also lowers the decision-making authorities about purchasing drones from top Pentagon leaders to the first general, admiral or Senior Executive Service civilian in a unit’s chain of command.

The memo outlines a threefold approach to incorporating more small drones into the arsenals of combat units — with an immediate focus on providing them to units focused on operating in the Indo-Pacific region. Hegseth said the military would immediately begin purchasing hundreds of American-made small, cheap drones to provide a cash influx to industry. It would quickly get those capabilities to combat units to experiment with their capabilities, and it would mandate units incorporate the small, cheap drones into all their training iterations.

“Next year, I expect to see this capability integrated into all relevant combat training, including force-on-force drone wars,” Hegseth wrote.

The new policies come as Pentagon officials have closely watched Ukrainian forces innovate on the battlefield with small, lethal drones against Russian invading forces. The New York Times reported in March that drones account for some 70% of battlefield casualties in the war in Ukraine.

Last month, Ukraine launched a massive swarm of more than 100 small, cheap drones into Russian territory, striking more than 40 Russian bombers and destroying more than a dozen of them in a brazen and innovative attack on Moscow’s air power.

Hegseth’s memo implores American forces to find similar ways to advance drone warfare. He also calls for the military services to consider what expensive weapons systems could be replaced by cheap, disposable drones.

He gave the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force 60 days to report to him any major weapons that could be “more cost effective or lethal” if replaced by small drones.

He also ordered the military to expand its use of 3D printing and other in-house drone building capabilities and stand up purpose-built innovation units meant to exclusively innovate drone warfare within the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps by Sept. 1.

“Our adversaries have a head start in small UAS, but we will perform a technological leapfrog and establish small UAS domain dominance by the end of 2027,” Hegseth wrote in his memo. “We will accomplish this urgent goal by combining the nation’s best qualities, including risk-taking. Senior officers must set the tone.

“Accelerating this critical battlefield technology requires a Department of War culture.”