Key Points and Summary – Ukraine’s war has shifted the drone revolution to the ground, where unmanned ground vehicles now deliver supplies, evacuate wounded, breach mines, conduct ISR, and lay suppressive fire.
-The U.S. Army is racing to adapt—overhauling organizations, consolidating HQs, and pivoting to portfolio-based budgeting to move money faster across counter-UAS, EW, and swarms.
U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Colin Clark, a mortarman assigned to Bravo Company, Battalion Landing Team 1/5, 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and a native of Texas, engages a target with a NightFighter S counter-unmanned aerial vehicle system during a demonstration for Philippine Marines assigned to Intelligence Company, 3rd Marine Brigade, as part of exercise KAMANDAG 8 at Tarumpitao Point, Palawan Province, Philippines, Oct. 17, 2024. KAMANDAG is an annual Philippine Marine Corps and U.S. Marine Corps-led exercise aimed at enhancing the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ defense and humanitarian capabilities by providing valuable training in combined operations with foreign militaries in the advancement of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific. This year marks the eighth iteration of this exercise and includes participants from the French Armed Forces, Royal Thai Marine Corps, and Indonesian Marine Corps; including continued participation from the Australian Defense Force, British Armed Forces, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, and Republic of Korea Marine Corps. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Amelia Kang)
-Elite units are live-testing expendable drones while new efforts—xTech, “Ready Now,” and the VC-style “Fuze” initiative—aim to scale innovations and avoid the acquisition valley of death.
-With Ukraine targeting production of 350,000 drones monthly, U.S. leaders argue speed, scale, and risk tolerance are essential to outpace Beijing and Moscow.
Rangers, Robots, and Reform: Lessons from Ukraine’s Frontlines
What started in the skies has moved to the ground. The next drone revolution is here and being led by Ukraine’s army.
The key question is not whether this battle-hardened military, the largest in Europe, can keep up with all the churn, but whether America can learn and adapt from a key partner’s frontlines.
A perfect storm of deregulation, acquisition reform, portfolio-based budgeting, and new leadership in Washington means the US Army could be poised to capitalize on the upheaval and stay ahead of Beijing thanks to Kyiv.
Iran’s drones fighting in Ukraine. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Why This Moment Is Unique for the Armed Forces
The US Army of 2027 will bear little resemblance to the Army of today. Service leaders have been pushing transformation in contact for years, with a recent refresh through the Army Transformation Initiative.
To reorient American soldiers around homeland defense and deterring China, service leaders are shedding legacy equipment, consolidating headquarters, and streamlining headcount across Army components and civilian staff.
Changing how—and how fast—the Army buys kit is running concurrently with organizational change, in part to help offset the costs. So far, service leaders have claimed $48 billion in DOGE-like efficiencies over five years to help reinvest in more relevant equipment for soldiers.
Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll recently noted that Congress once gave the Army a dozen broad funding categories it could use to transfer money between, for example, vehicles in one category and drones in another.
“Today, he said, there are more than 1,400 narrowly drawn ‘buckets,’ some tied to specific makes and models, making it nearly impossible to pivot quickly.”
To support these shifts, given the fast-moving global events, technological changes, and cunning adversaries, Army budgeteers will consolidate various program line items into new, broad budget categories, such as counter-UAS, electronic warfare, and drone swarms.
Ukraine Drone. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Effects- or portfolio-based budgeting allows leaders to shift funds swiftly as technology changes while (eventually) constantly competing and re-competing equipment as it is developed, built, and sustained. Gone are the days of a winner-take-all contract where the same company maintains equipment for decades after it is delivered to soldiers.
The Latest Drone Revolution is On the Ground
All this new energy and speed in updating the Pentagon’s bureaucratic processes, which can be downright Kremlin-esque, can’t come soon enough.
Again, look no further than the battlefields of Ukraine for proof.
On the heels of aerial drones, “Ukraine is now leading a second revolution in the mass introduction and adaptation of unmanned ground vehicles for frontline operations,” according to Anatolii Mazarchuk of the Stevens Institute of Technology in National Defense magazine.
Ground robots are “not the future” but rather the “routine reality” of how Ukrainian forces wage war, according to Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces.
Nor are these ground drones intended for support roles only; instead, they’ve become “indispensable battlefield assets.”
Already, ground robots on the frontlines of Eastern Europe are:
-providing logistics, such as the last-mile delivery of supplies
-conducting casualty evacuation
-laying and destroying mines
-performing 24/7 ISR
-providing suppressive fires
The combination of air and ground drones in a constant state of transformation and innovation has meant the modern battlefield’s kill zone “has expanded far beyond the range of a rifle or a mortar. Soldiers on both sides are in constant danger when they are as far as six to nine miles from the [enemy] contact line.”
Given the staggering cycles of change occurring on a rapid basis, it is essential that the United States Army has eyes on the ground. Ukraine’s ground drones are providing a constant feedback loop, with US Army representatives taking note of what does and does not work. That effort includes determining the art of the doable as it relates to pairing up with older legacy systems.
Army Secretary Driscoll has noted that the increasing transparency of battlefields, including at night, has turned Army special operators into improvisers. Rangers and other elite commandos are experimenting with disposable drones, commercial quadcopters, and custom-built weapons to maintain their edge.
Exclusive units like the 75th Ranger Regiment are bypassing the Pentagon’s slow procurement system to try out new drones, sensors, and weapons in real time. Rangers quickly test to discern what is real from what is still science fiction, and then promptly share that info with Big Army. The 173rd Airborne Infantry Brigade, for example, has already used ground robots for resupply missions and will next pivot to employing expendable robots for breaching operations.
Key to Ukraine’s success isn’t just constant iteration and evolution—but scale. Ukraine’s military leaders aim for a minimum production rate of 350,000 drones per month. Based on Russia’s ability to recruit between 25 to 30 thousand new soldiers each month, Ukraine estimates its forces need “at least two drones per enemy soldier plus additional drones for enemy drone pilots, logistics, artillery, storage facilities, and so on.”
Shaking Up Bureaucracy with Venture Capitalist Approaches
Thankfully, Army leaders are now able to see the broken bureaucratic processes more clearly. One Army official noted how the service is seeking commonality and flexibility at the same time, which is contradictory.
Initiatives like “Ready Now,” Shark Tank-like xTechDisrupt, and even a private equity investor day with the Departments of Defense and Treasury teaming up to form public-private partnerships that help the Army solve immediate problems are examples of new approaches.
Merging them all together is another new effort dubbed “Fuze.” Trying and buying Army equipment, and pairing technology with units, is how leaders seek to “instill venture capitalist thinking” into the ancient Pentagon purchasing processes, according to Driscoll. Notably, the Army secretary highlights the unprecedented “risk tolerance” of this Pentagon civilian team.
The new Silicon Valley model “consolidates the Army’s innovation programs—xTech, Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer, Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) and Technology Maturation Initiative—into one enterprise designed to help turn an initial concept into a scaled-up capability.”
With a budget of roughly $265 million for Fuze in fiscal year 2026, small and medium-sized businesses with innovative solutions will be paired with Army program offices to avoid the acquisition “valley of death” and provide resources to help companies scale quickly.
These efforts are essential to demonstrate repeatedly to Congress that flexible funding for drones, counter-drone, and electronic warfare works. Success will bring more flexibility, allowing for additional wins.
Given the pace of technological change on the battlefields of Ukraine, which unfolds in hours and days, not months or years, the US Army must move quickly, take calculated risks, and buy at scale. When failures occur, leaders must be candid with legislators and learn from those incidents. But slowing down is not an option since the ground drone revolution is here, and America is already behind.
About the Author: Mackenzie Eaglen
Mackenzie Eaglen, now a National Security Journal Contributing Editor, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is also a regular guest lecturer at universities, a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security. Ms. Eaglen is also one of the 12-member US Army War College Board of Visitors, which offers advice about academic program objectives and effectiveness, and serves on the US Army Science Board, an advisory body that provides guidance on scientific and other matters to the Army’s senior leadership. In 2023, she became a member of the Commission on the Future of the Navy, established by Congress to study the strategy, budget, and policy concerning the future strength of the US Navy fleet.
More Military
China Claims New J-35 Stealth Fighter Has Radar Cross-Section ‘Smaller Than a Human Palm’
The SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3 Bomber?
5 Reasons A U.S.-China War Could Start
Swamplaw Yankee
September 29, 2025 at 4:51 pm
Alert: Periodicity is the issue. Time wields a very sharp knife blade that swings with a kinetic edge on the laggards throat!
The assignment: stop the democidist fascist head of the Kremlin terrorist Imperial empire from playing poker with the radioactive contamination of Europe + the WEST thru the sabotage of the 5 cluster nuclear reactor hub belonging to Ukraine.
Who in all of the USA is prepared to seize, secure, stabilize + stop the mass abductor of Ukrainian Children from poker card play + eradicating the EU/Europe/CANADA with his gleeful termination of emergency generator power supply?
Now: Today: not in MAGA POTUS elite sleepy-ville cuddle code talk with the vassals of the democidist spewing out RED lines that the YANKEE MSM loves to swallow whole.
Someone has to stop the same delusion as in 1939 USA. The FDR Cabal pretended all 1939-1940-1941-1942 that commie butcher Stalin was not holding hands with NAZI Hitler.
Is there still in existence the old IWO JIMA era USMC or is it all 2025 blather force design polysyllable nebulousness?
The task: outside the old box that the MAGA POTUS elite + its cabal seem entombed in.
Retrieve a world threat of radioactive contamination to humanity and remove this imminent ( unprotected) threat from the ancient crazed genetic need of ethnic ruuzzkies to Genocide Ukrainians.
That the PRC CCP Xi regime is covertly funding this ruzzkie regime to the hilt elevates this up to a truly heroic mission. The op-ed only hints at exponential speed of evolving drones/missiles that most Ukrainian Fathers have mastered since 2014. It does not hint that vital missions for the WEST unfold in hours and mere days. Is there a leader of the WEST here today, actually able to lead? The WEST needs a vector that can remedy this poker card game of radioactive poisoning played by Putin/Lavrov, et al. The WEST could once depend on the existence of USMC. Now? The peer readers know best. -30-