For all the ongoing hype about the U.S. military’s arsenal of flying robots, they’re anything but safe from budget cuts. Pentagon officials anticipate spending significantly less on their surveillance and attack drones over the next several years, effectively ending the drone boom of the previous decade.
The impending budget cuts are expected to affect each major funding source for the drones: the research and development accounts that keep new models coming online; the operations and maintenance accounts that keep current ones in the air; and the procurement accounts that keep the military purchasing them.
Already, the Pentagon is signaling that the boom times for drones are coming to an end, even as the robots remain one of the U.S.’s signature counterterrorism weapons. An overview prepared in February by Dyke Weatherington, who oversees unmanned systems for the Pentagon’s acquisitions and technology directorate, outlined the downturn.
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