How is the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) conceptualizing the ultralow-cost unmanned aircraft system (UAS) phenomenon in the wake of its widespread success in Ukraine?

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) conceptualizes ultra low-cost unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) – often called “small UAS” (sUAS) – as both a threat to its operations and an opportunity for force multiplication. Counter-sUAS (C-sUAS) operations have become an organizational and financial priority for the Pentagon. While both DoD and individual military personnel have also long been interested in the positive use cases for very lightweight, inexpensive drones similar to those available to consumers, concerns about security came to dominate that discussion. That has meant that the embrace of inexpensive sUAS for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and kinetic attacks has lagged behind efforts to defend against them. There are some limited indications that the success of sUAS in Ukraine has directly influenced DoD interest in the use of such platforms, but there is little evidence in the open source that Ukraine has led to a substantial reconceptualization of these tools.