A lag between the planned increase in drone usage and the number of the aircraft that the Pentagon expects to acquire over the next few years could be explained by military officials’ deference to private sector developments, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
The Aug. 27 CRS paper said that if the unmanned aerial vehicle’s past is any indication, the Department of Defense will allow contractors and corporations to take the lead on shaping its future.
“DOD again appears to be waiting for industry to develop a new generation of UAVs rather than acquire more of the current models,” the report stated. It noted that “the history of UAVs shows that they were not built as a result of government requirements, but through independent research and development by industry.”
“Industry’s inventions were then turned over to the military to see if commanders could find uses for them,” it added.
The Wall Street Journal reported in August that the Department of Defense is expecting on increasing drone flights by about 50 percent over the next four years. The Pentagon hopes to get “more intelligence and greater firepower” from the change in policy “to keep up with a sprouting number of global hot spots,” the paper noted.
“Pentagon officials didn’t have immediate cost estimates for the plan, which is predicated on budgets subject to congressional approval,” it also remarked.
The CRS paper noted that there was disconnect between these preparations, on one hand, and the number of UAVs slated for military acquisition between now and 2020: about one hundred.
In addition to theorizing that the incongruity exists because the Pentagon is allowing the private sector to take the lead, CRS also said that the “thousands” of UAVs purchased by the DOD during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are sating its institutional demand for existing models.
Conservative lawmakers have, in recent months, bemoaned the fact that drones currently employed by the US military are mostly useless in intense combat situations.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair John McCain (R-Ariz.) in March urged Defense Secretary Ash Carter “to ensure that the Navy’s first unmanned combat aircraft is capable of both providing persistent ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and conducting strike missions from the carrier at standoff distances in contested environments.”
Read the full CRS report here, courtesy of the Federation of American Scientists.
