Nadia Schadlow
The central theme of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s recent speech on acquisition reform was that commercial companies and technologies are at the foundation of a strong defense industrial base and military innovation. As he put it, the department wants to harness more of America’s cutting-edge companies to focus their talent and technologies on our toughest national-security problems. New results won’t appear overnight, but the direction launched by Hegseth is the right one.
That’s why defense policymakers should be cautious about a provision now under consideration in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that could undercut the dynamism we need in one of our most critical emerging defense sectors: unmanned autonomous systems.
Tucked into the bill is a proposal based on the SkyFoundry Act of 2025, to establish a government-owned innovation hub and production facility that would produce up to one million small unmanned aircraft systems under the oversight of the US Army Materiel Command. The Army recently reiterated this plan to build one million drones over the next 2-3 years.
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