The Pentagon is seeking roughly $50 billion in reconciliation funding to rapidly expand autonomous and robotic systems, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told attendees at the Project Agincourt panel on Wednesday. The goal is to move the Pentagon’s autonomous weapons stockpile from thousands of units into the millions.
Hegseth presented the request as part of a broader effort to make autonomous technology available in far greater quantities. He characterized the money as a one time investment rather than a recurring annual allocation.
The reconciliation funding would be used to accelerate the development and production of autonomous and robotic systems. Hegseth’s description focused on quickly expanding the number of systems available to the military.
The request is separate from the Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which includes $53.6 billion for the Drone Dominance initiative. The budget documents do not establish that the reconciliation money cited by Hegseth is the same funding or that all of it would be dedicated to drone purchases.
Within the fiscal 2027 request, $16.9 billion is designated for unmanned system procurement and $14.4 billion for counter unmanned systems. Another $13.5 billion is listed for contested logistics.
The request also includes $4.5 billion for collaborative autonomy and $4.3 billion for institutional systems and personnel. Together, those figures detail the Pentagon’s planned spending across procurement, protection, logistics, autonomy and supporting structures.
“Ultimately we will be dealing with hundreds of thousands of one-way attack systems this year and into the millions in years to come at a pace that this department’s never ever seen before.”
Hegseth also argued that the Pentagon must make it easier for new companies to compete in a market long dominated by established contractors and costly platforms. Traditional defense companies remain important, he said, but the department also needs lower cost systems that manufacturers can produce at scale.
The Army’s Drone Dominance program provides a specific measure of that production ambition. In a December 2025 announcement, the Army said a $1 billion initiative would fund approximately 340,000 small unmanned aircraft systems for combat units over two years.
Under that plan, the Army expected to deliver tens of thousands of drones in 2026. Deliveries would then rise to hundreds of thousands by 2027, according to the service.
Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle said the Army is widening access to its programs for companies outside the traditional defense industrial base. The service must create room for new entrants while continuing its work with established suppliers, he said.
Telle also described plans to coordinate the Army’s autonomous systems efforts while distributing the resulting capabilities to operational units. The developing approach incorporates drones, autonomous ground systems, autonomous fires and autonomous lift into future combat operations.
“We have an MOS in the Army, 390A, where warrant officers could keep the speciality and the skills over the duration to teach our soldiers how to do robotics,” Telle added.
Expanding access to Army test ranges is another piece of the effort. Telle said greater access would give developers more opportunities to test their systems and obtain feedback from military users.
He also described efforts to share lessons throughout the force rather than leave individual units and organizations to solve the same problems independently. That approach would spread information gained through testing and operational feedback across the Army.
Hegseth, meanwhile, targeted bureaucratic barriers that slow the adoption of new technology. He urged officials to identify rules and directives that could be changed without requiring new legislation, telling the panel, “I want you to tell me which rules can be signed away.”
The message from the panel was centered on speed, scale and broader competition. The Pentagon wants millions of autonomous systems, while the Army is opening programs, ranges and operational pathways to more companies as it prepares to distribute those capabilities across combat units.