Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has stripped the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force of independent control over their drone programs, according to a Department of War announcement creating a single official empowered to redirect funding, halt fielding decisions, and set milestones for every unmanned and autonomous system in the Pentagon's portfolio.
Background
Hegseth signed the memo establishing the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, or DRPM-UxS, on June 29, 2026. The Department of War made the memo public on July 1. The new office answers directly to Deputy Secretary of War Stephen Feinberg, sidestepping the chain of command that previously let each military service manage its own drone budgets, requirements and acquisition timelines.
The move follows a broader Trump administration push to accelerate domestic drone production, a priority reflected in the Department of War's own framing of the reorganization as necessary "to ensure American drone dominance." The DRPM-UxS converts that policy emphasis into a standing office with budget and contracting authority that previously required negotiation across five military services and multiple defense agencies.
Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell framed the move as a response to foreign production volume, saying adversaries "collectively produce millions of unmanned systems each year across all domains" and that the department "must move at the speed this moment demands." The announcement did not name specific adversary nations in the released text.
Key Details
The DRPM-UxS absorbs Joint Interagency Task Force 401 and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group as subordinate offices, and takes control of unmanned and counter-drone programs and their associated funding lines across every service branch, effective immediately. The Defense Innovation Unit is not folded into the new office the same way; Defense One reported it instead becomes the DRPM-UxS's primary point of contact with commercial industry on unmanned and autonomous systems.
The office's director, who had not been named as of publication, holds several powers previously distributed among service acquisition chiefs. Under the memo, the director serves as milestone decision authority for unmanned programs, acts as the top contracting official for those efforts, can order services to shift funding between unmanned programs, and holds authority to halt any system from fielding. Defense One reported the director will sit on an executive board, chaired by the deputy secretary of war, that also includes the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, military department heads and defense undersecretaries.
The memo sets a compressed startup timeline. The director must begin hiring staff within 30 days of appointment, deliver an organizational plan within 60 days, and produce a full inventory of every program transferred into the office within 90 days. Positions within the DRPM-UxS are exempted from the department-wide hiring freezes and reductions in force that have constrained staffing elsewhere in the Pentagon, according to Military Times, which described the office as "the single joint integrator for all unmanned and autonomous system programs."
The reorganization breaks structurally from how the Pentagon has historically managed unmanned systems, which developed piecemeal across the services, combatant commands and defense agencies over two decades. Task Force 401, stood up to speed small-drone fielding to combat units, and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, focused on mass-producible systems, previously operated with their own reporting chains, budgets and acquisition priorities, often pursuing overlapping or competing unmanned initiatives with little central coordination. Folding them alongside every service's individual drone program managers under one director, while redirecting the Defense Innovation Unit into an industry-liaison role for the office, concentrates authority that used to require negotiation across five services and multiple defense agencies into a single office answerable to the deputy secretary of war.
What It Means for Contractors
Contractors selling unmanned aircraft, ground robots, maritime drones, counter-drone systems or the software that ties them together now face a single decision-maker instead of five separate service acquisition organizations. That cuts both ways. A contractor with a strong relationship inside one service's program office may find that relationship worth less once the DRPM-UxS controls milestone decisions and contracting authority for that program. Conversely, a company that struggled to get traction with one service can potentially reach the same buyer that controls every other service's unmanned budget through a single office.
The consolidation also changes where lobbying and business-development effort should go. Companies tracking service-specific drone solicitations should expect those solicitations to increasingly originate from, or require sign-off from, the DRPM-UxS rather than individual service acquisition executives. Firms already engaged with Joint Interagency Task Force 401 or the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group on unmanned prototyping should watch for those relationships to be reshaped as the new office absorbs their portfolios during the 90-day inventory period. Firms working with the Defense Innovation Unit should expect it to increasingly function as their entry point to the DRPM-UxS rather than an independent prototyping channel.
The director's explicit authority to shift funding between unmanned programs and to halt any system from fielding introduces new risk and opportunity simultaneously. A program that was fully funded under a service budget could see funding redirected to a higher department priority once the DRPM-UxS controls the purse strings across all services. At the same time, a promising program stalled by one service's budget constraints could gain funding if the new office decides it merits department-wide priority. Contractors should reassess program risk on individual unmanned contracts in light of this new single point of funding control.
The hiring-freeze exemption for DRPM-UxS positions signals the department intends to staff the office quickly and substantially, which means the 30-, 60- and 90-day deadlines in the memo are likely to hold. Contractors with active or pending unmanned systems contracts should anticipate outreach, program reviews or new reporting requirements from the office within that window, and should identify now who within their government affairs or program management teams will engage with the director once named. Companies pursuing new unmanned systems business should treat the DRPM-UxS, rather than individual service program executive offices, as the primary point of entry going forward, and should expect the 90-day program inventory to surface as the first concrete signal of how the office intends to prioritize competing unmanned systems requirements across the services.
