Hegseth orders Pentagon to cut bureaucratic delays in counter-drone approvals

TLDR

• Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a memorandum dated 28 September, titled "Accelerating Employment of Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems to Protect American Airspace Sovereignty," directing the Pentagon to cut bureaucratic delays in fielding counter-drone systems.¹²
• Any approval request left unaddressed for 30 days must be escalated to the Secretary of War's office, and approval authorities must reuse "relevant prior approvals, test data and risk mitigations" for comparable requests rather than restarting assessments.²³
• Military services are barred from repeating a weapons safety review for an unchanged system, configuration, and use case unless a material change creates new risk, and required legal reviews must generally finish within 10 days of receiving necessary information.²
• Hegseth called small unmanned systems "the defining threat of our time" and said: "We will not answer a fast-moving threat with a slow-moving bureaucracy."¹

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a memorandum dated 28 September directing the Pentagon to speed up development and fielding of counter-drone systems by cutting bureaucratic delays, titled "Accelerating Employment of Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems to Protect American Airspace Sovereignty."¹² The memo instructs officials to treat delays in anti-drone capability approvals as "an operational risk" and to eliminate "unnecessary barriers that delay c-UAS capabilities for forces, installations, and assets."¹²

The memo targets four specific barriers.¹²³ On authorities to operate, the department's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer has 30 days to build a department-wide approval process intended to cut timelines "from months to days or weeks," and any request left unaddressed for 30 days escalates to the Secretary of War's office.²³ On spectrum certification, the chief information officer will review procedures for faster approvals, backed by the Defense Innovation Unit's Project Spectrum Strike, AI-driven software for spectrum coordination and deconfliction.¹² On weapons safety, military services will not repeat a safety review for an unchanged system, configuration, and use case unless a material change creates new risk, with JIATF-401 coordinating reviews with the Unmanned Systems Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager to avoid duplicate assessments.²³ On legal reviews, required reviews for counter-drone weapons must generally be completed within 10 days of receiving the necessary information.² Any denial under this process requires a documented rationale and must be reported to JIATF-401.²

Hegseth said: "We will not answer a fast-moving threat with a slow-moving bureaucracy," and described small unmanned systems as "the defining threat of our time."¹ The memo explicitly does not change existing policies or procedures governing operational counter-drone use, including activities under 10 U.S.C. § 130i, and does not permit violations of law or safety compromises.² It supports Trump's Executive Order 14305, "Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty," signed in June 2025.¹ The Epoch Times noted Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard warned in August that bases were "ill-equipped" for drone swarm attacks, and that U.S. Northern Command has reported Joint Task Force-Southern Border has downed more than 300 drones since the start of the year.¹

Why it matters: the memo targets the acquisition and legal-review bureaucracy itself, not any single weapon system, aiming to compress approval timelines that officials across the Pentagon's own counter-drone programs have identified as a bigger obstacle than the hardware.

Footnotes

1. The Epoch Times, "Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Accelerate Counter Drone Capabilities," https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/hegseth-orders-pentagon-to-accelerate-counter-drone-capabilities-6098790 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

2. Defence Industry Europe, "U.S. Department of War orders faster counter-drone approvals, with 30-day escalation rule and limits on repeat safety reviews," https://defence-industry.eu/u-s-department-of-war-orders-faster-counter-drone-approvals-with-30-day-escalation-rule-and-limits-on-repeat-safety-reviews/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

3. Mirage News, "War Department Speeds Counter-Drone Efforts to Protect U.S. Airspace," https://www.miragenews.com/war-department-speeds-counter-drone-efforts-to-1754506/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴