Pentagon technology chief says U.S. was unprepared for drone warfare

Michael says U.S. drone stockpile is up to about 500,000

Pentagon technology chief Emil Michael told the WSJ Tech conference on Wednesday in Napa, Calif., that the U.S. was unprepared for the modern era of drone warfare. He said the Pentagon is racing to arm troops with autonomous systems, which have come to dominate conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.

“We were caught flat-footed by the drone warfare in Ukraine and Russia,” said Michael, the Defense Department’s under secretary for research and engineering. “We weren’t prepared because we just didn’t imagine it. I just want to make sure we are imagining the next fight.”

Michael said the U.S. manufactured about 1,000 drones under the prior administration, while the country’s current stockpile is up to about 500,000. He said the stockpile remains a small fraction of Ukraine’s estimate that the country will build 8 million to 10 million drones this year, as the war with Russia approaches its fifth year. “We helped the Ukrainians a ton, but they invented what they actually needed because we didn’t have it,” he said.

The Pentagon is pushing into inexpensive autonomous systems, but the U.S. military remains conservative in its use of AI in fighting wars, Michael said. Target development currently relies less on AI than intelligence reports, satellite imagery and other human-led investigatory work, he said. “We’re not that sophisticated in doing these kinds of things,” he said, referring to AI-generated targets.

Michael declined to comment on the U.S. strike in Iran last February that hit a girls’ school the U.S. mistook for a military target. More than 100 people were killed, including dozens of children, and the U.S. has not released the findings of its investigation. Planning for the strike involved an AI targeting system.

“We have to have appropriate human judgment at every level. Period,” Michael said.

The Pentagon’s AI plans exclude Anthropic after the Defense Department earlier this year labeled the San Francisco company a national security threat. Michael reiterated his view that Anthropic is a national security risk and said it wasn’t hard to quit using the company’s models. The Defense Department still uses models from Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s Grok on its networks.

The Pentagon’s Project Meridian is studying the future of warfare, including what conflict underground or in space could look like. SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk and Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey are part of the group.

Michael also said the U.S. currently leads China in AI and has more data centers and better semiconductors than its top adversary. Beijing, he added, is six months to a year behind the U.S. in AI development.