2025 Advocacy initiatives

SITUATION

The United States is unable to maintain a competitive pace with emerging small drone and counter-drone capabilities and vulnerabilities at the speed of relevance due to outdated policies, institutional bureaucracy, and complacent processes that prevent and impede rapid evaluation and adoption.

  • Congress must equip the services with the Budget and Trust to rapidly adopt emerging technologies at the speed of relevance over the next PoM 5-year cycle.

  • The Trump Administration must establish a Federal Drone Administration and NSC/DOGE Drone Task Force to revise, update, or eliminate outdated policies across the DoD, FAA, FCC, and DHS that currently restrict or prevent drone and counter-drone evaluation, adoption, and employment.

  • In the interim, the Secretary of Defense must sanction, direct, and equip Installation and Operational Commanders to approve safe, common sense authority to locally waive, except, or ignore policies that impede the Armed Forces from training. evaluation, and acquisition of drone and counter drone TTPs and technologies.

These quotes come directly from commanders and operational units—including general officers—reflect real-world mission taskings.

- QUOTES GATHERED APRIL 2025

“Our platoon wanted to fly a new drone that operated on 1 watt - the frequency didn’t even push past the fenceline, but the NCR Spectrum Manager said it would take 2 years to approve us flying it”

“We asked for permission to 3D print our own drones for training and  were told it would take 8 months to issue an airworthiness approval per drone. It was a non-starter.”

“I can’t even modify an NDAA compliant drone with a fiber optic cable or payload because that invalidates the “Blue List” status”

“I can’t even send my squad to practice commercial drone racing for familiarization because the local SJA/JAG said racer drones weren’t ‘NDAA compliant.”

“Range control won’t even let us duct tape a smoke grenade to a drone”

 “have to wait to train my platoon on drone operations until everyone gets a full flight physical including a chest x-ray, the same as F-35 pilots, because a small quadcopter is still considered an “airplane”

“There is a company with a promising NDAA compliant drone solution but I was advised I can’t use it until it’s on the Blue list, if it makes it on, next year”

“I wanted to evaluate a counter-drone swarm platform that could take out 100 drones, but the base only allowed 12 to be flown at a time because of some local policy”

*NAMES WITHHELD TO PROTECT SERVICEMEMBERS IDENTITIES