Nearly all Pentagon drone programs will fall under a single new office that will hold significant influence over the direction of uncrewed systems for the US military.

The move is intended to speed up the buying and deployment of drones, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a memo, reflecting a key goal of the second Trump administration to ready forces for drone-heavy conflicts.

According to the memo issued earlier this week, the new office known as the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems will serve as the sole joint integrator for every unmanned and autonomous system program throughout the Department of Defense. Its director has not yet been selected but will answer to Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg.

The office will manage a broad portfolio that includes small drones, surface vessels or drone boats, underwater craft in coordination with the submarine office, ground robots, autonomous and artificial intelligence systems, swarming technology, and counter-drone defenses. It will also supervise drone marketplaces recently set up by various DoD components.

Thanks to this wide reach, the office can select which drones advance, elevate specific capabilities or contracts, and halt work on others.

Although the change grants the office substantial authority, some programs remain outside its scope. Major weapons efforts already on separate acquisition tracks, such as the Air Force Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, will stay with the military services.

The office will additionally lead Joint Interagency Task Force 401, which focuses on countering small drones, and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, responsible for scaling production of autonomous drones across the force.

This development marks another step in the Pentagon effort to embed drone technologies throughout the armed forces. It comes alongside a record $74 billion budget proposal for drones and counter-drone capabilities plus large outlays for testing and fielding inexpensive one-way attack drones.

"Adversaries collectively produce millions of unmanned systems each year across all domains," Hegseth stated in the memo. "While global military unmanned systems production has skyrocketed over the last three years, the United States has been slow to field these capabilities at scale. Drones and autonomous systems are the most consequential battlefield innovation of this generation."