FAIRBANKS, Alaska — In the final weeks of June, Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska became the stage for dozens of aircraft lining up for Red Flag, an esteemed annual multinational exercise. This event serves as a critical platform for the U.S. and its allies to showcase their prowess in advanced air combat tactics and to ready their military forces for possible combat scenarios.
Approximately 20 miles northwest of Eielson, on a remote, dusty range just beyond the Army’s Fort Wainwright, a different type of evaluation and training was taking place concurrently with the latter stages of Red Flag. The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), which functions as the Pentagon’s gateway to commercial technological innovations, selected several companies to test small, long-range attack drones. These drones were designed to find and strike targets while overcoming electronic jamming of their signals.
Although smaller in scale compared to the nearby Red Flag exercise, the tests conducted by the DIU were targeting equally significant future warfare issues — the integration of drones into contemporary combat scenarios and the Pentagon’s role in fostering growth within the domestic tech industry and modernizing its bureaucratic procurement processes to acquire these technologies effectively.
For many years, the Pentagon has emphasized the growing importance of autonomous systems in military operations, highlighted by the significant role drones have played in conflict zones like Ukraine. The Trump administration had also shown a keen interest in nurturing the commercial drone sector by easing policy restrictions that complicate the procurement, testing, and deployment of these technologies.
On July 10, in a policy-shifting move, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a directive to overhaul how military branches acquire small unmanned air systems, granting more autonomy to ground forces to test and procure these systems directly.
Despite these robust directives from the highest levels of government, it remains uncertain if these new investments in domestic drone production and the Pentagon’s reform initiatives will translate into real change. Historical attempts to modify the Department of Defense’s acquisition strategies and realign military priorities have often seen limited success.
The DIU’s testing activities in Alaska offered a glimpse, albeit partial, into the readiness of the military’s acquisition frameworks and the capability of the U.S. drone industry to meet these strategic goals. According to Defense News, which observed the tests, DIU officials highlighted the challenges in navigating the slow and compartmentalized bureaucratic system that is often resistant to rapid change.
Trent Emeneker, who is at the helm of several autonomy projects for DIU, expressed during the event that the U.S. military’s drone capabilities are notably behind those of its competitors. “There is so much that we need to do right now in the uncrewed systems space,” Emeneker stated to journalists. “We are just really far behind, and we have to catch up.”
Challenges in Collaboration
The drone tests were part of a DIU initiative known as Project Artemis, which aims to identify and subsequently procure, on a large scale, cost-effective commercial unmanned aerial systems (UAS) capable of long-range operations and surviving electronic countermeasures like signal jamming. At the testing range in Alaska, DIU officials tested whether the Artemis drones could locate, lock onto, and accurately hit targets when their navigation and communication signals were compromised.
Four companies, including AV (formerly AeroVironment), Dragoon, and two Ukrainian firms paired with U.S.-based software companies, were contracted for the project. The Ukrainian companies, whose identities have not been revealed due to security reasons, conducted their drone operations in their homeland. One of these firms has already fulfilled its testing obligations under the contract, while the other recently suffered a setback when a Russian attack destroyed its production facilities.
During the testing, AV showcased a prototype system equipped with experimental software tailored for Artemis. This rail-launched drone, designed for one-way attack missions, operates with a navigation system independent of satellite technologies like GPS.
Dragoon presented its Artemis solution, a vertical take-off-and-landing drone named Sender, initially developed under a modest contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The design of this drone strikes a balance between cost-effectiveness and operational flexibility, enabling it to undertake extended missions.
Project Artemis, like most DIU initiatives, was established to quickly test and validate technologies that military personnel have identified as operational necessities. The project was kickstarted as part of a supplemental funding package for Ukraine approved by Congress last year. Following the directive from operators in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, lawmakers allocated approximately $16 million to rapidly identify a suitable solution.
Within just seven months, DIU managed to solicit proposals, evaluate submissions, and contract four companies to develop prototypes — a timeline significantly faster than typical Department of Defense acquisition programs. A critical aspect of DIU’s approach involves partnering with acquisition offices across military services and combat commands to facilitate the procurement and deployment of validated commercial capabilities. Without a committed acquisition partner, many projects risk falling into the notorious “valley of death,” where initiatives stall and fail to transition from development to operational use.
Despite the prevalent use of inexpensive attack drones in conflict regions like Ukraine and the Middle East, and the Pentagon’s expressed interest in expanding its arsenal of unmanned systems, DIU has faced challenges in securing an acquisition partner within the services for Artemis. Emeneker and his team have actively pitched the project to various program offices since last year but have yet to secure commitment. The reluctance stems from the services’ preference for systems tailored to their specific operational requirements over adopting a generalized solution.
“We continue to make phone calls every day and talk to program offices, talk to people who are interested that theoretically have money. I don’t have a great answer. We don’t have a partner,” Emeneker explained, highlighting the primary challenge he has encountered with this project. “That’s what I have spent the most time on with this project.”
The hope was that the performance of the systems during testing would bolster DIU’s case for adoption. However, the results did not align with Emeneker’s expectations. If DIU fails to find a department willing to take over the project, the companies that meet the contract’s requirements will still receive what is known as a “success memo.” This memo enables them to quickly enter into a production contract should a Department of Defense office decide to procure their system. However, even if some companies are prepared to transition, there’s a possibility that the capabilities developed under Artemis might still end up without a definitive home.
Issues During Testing
The testing event saw progress from the participating companies, but neither performed up to DIU’s expectations. On the second day, AV’s drone repeatedly failed to locate its target under jamming conditions and ultimately crashed into a hill. In another test on the same day, Dragoon’s system missed its target, resulting in the drone catching fire upon impact.
The performance of both systems under electronic warfare (EW) conditions was particularly disappointing. Emeneker remarked that it was too early to pinpoint the exact reasons for the underperformance or to deem the project a failure. “Without looking at the data and analyzing it, it’s really hard to know because understanding the interplay of the jamming… software bugs, it gets complex,” he said. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions but it was not what I would have hoped for or wanted to see.”
He also noted that while the platforms weren’t perfect, achieving perfection was not the goal. The primary objective of Artemis is to establish a baseline for disposable drone capabilities that offer a more cost-effective alternative to high-end munitions. By the end of the testing, both systems had made impacts and were closer to hitting their targets.
Nevertheless, Emeneker expressed concerns about what the initial outcomes imply about the state of the U.S. drone industrial base. “If we had to go to war tomorrow, do we have what we need?” he questioned. “No. So, how do we fix that? That’s what we’re trying to do is fix that capability.”
Efforts to Pivot
DIU has been addressing challenges within the U.S. drone industrial base for several years. In 2020, it launched a project called Blue UAS to simplify the process for field units to acquire small drones. Chris Bonzagni, a former DIU program manager who now operates his own defense and dual-use consulting firm, was involved in establishing the project, which evaluates commercial drones to ensure they comply with U.S. regulations prohibiting the military from purchasing unmanned systems with critical components manufactured in China.
Bonzagni, who supported the Artemis testing, explained that Blue UAS was not designed with program managers or bureaucrats in mind but rather to meet the needs of tactical units. “The vision for Blue UAS was, we’re all infantry guys; I’m a former enlisted guy. How do I get a list of drones that, if I’m a staff sergeant in Iraq at the time, they can just purchase with their [government purchase card],” he shared with Defense News. “That was the original intent.”
While Blue UAS has become the standard across the U.S. government for verifying drone compliance, Bonzagni views the effort as a failed attempt to deliver affordable drones directly to the troops who need them most. A combination of limited resources and a complex Department of Defense acquisition system prevented the program from scaling effectively. Additionally, policies requiring companies to demonstrate compliance with every hardware or software upgrade hindered innovation. At a time when Ukrainians were deploying thousands of drones to maintain control in their resistance against Russia’s invasion, the U.S. struggled to supply systems to its own operators.
DIU is working to address some of the issues with Blue UAS and recently announced changes aimed at expanding its cleared list to include more companies. Hegseth’s recent memo, which calls for “drone dominance,” directs the Defense Contract Management Agency to help scale the effort, potentially driving additional resources toward the project and alleviating some of the policy barriers that have limited its potential.
Through initiatives like Blue UAS and Artemis, DIU is striving to refocus the Defense Department’s acquisition strategy on the needs of tactical units in the field. Another new project, Project GI, aims to test “ready-now” drones in operational environments, which is crucial for ensuring that a system will perform as expected under real-world conditions.
“That’s who we want to focus on. It’s not a lab. It’s not the colonel. It’s not the sergeant first class. It’s the people on the front line,” Emeneker emphasized. “The pendulum is all the way over here. We’re trying to swing it back to get more to that end user.”
(Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the system AV brought to the Artemis demonstration.)
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Jamal Peterson reports on defense, aerospace, and tech policy. With a military background and a strategic mind, he dissects complex subjects with clarity, offering readers sharp, reliable insights.
