Only a decade ago, the United States was the world’s leading drone innovator, flying Predators and Reapers to target and kill terrorists in faraway countries. But as Israel, Russia, and Ukraine have recently demonstrated in dramatic campaigns, another drone revolution has begun. Where once drones were expensive and remote-controlled for targeted strikes and strategic surveillance, now they can be procured for as little as a few hundred dollars and perform a wide array of missions, from scouting the battlefield to delivering blood and medicine to injured troops on the frontlines.

Militaries all over the world are experimenting with this new generation of drones in every aspect of combat. Israel and Ukraine, for example, used first-person-view drones to attack inside enemy territory. Russia’s volleys of one-way attack drones, missiles, and guided bombs have targeted Ukrainian power and manufacturing facilities. On the frontlines in Ukraine, both Moscow and Kyiv are using small drones as well as loitering munitions to destroy troops, tanks, and support equipment while relying on the same unmanned aerial vehicles to resupply, triage casualties, and identify approaching enemies. These drones are no longer operated from afar but embedded into trenches or smuggled deep into an adversary’s territory.

The United States has largely missed this revolution in military technology. Although Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has promised to “unleash American drone dominance,” so far the United States’ drone arsenal remains dominated by the larger, more expensive systems it pioneered a decade ago. New drone programs such as the air force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft or the army’s Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance are still in prototype and far from cheap. The air force’s CCA is estimated at $15 million to $20 million per unit; the army’s much smaller drone will still cost between $70,000 and $170,000. Even if the military bought more drones than it currently plans to, it is unclear whether U.S. companies could produce anywhere near the approximately 200,000 drones that Ukraine has been using monthly.

To take advantage of the drone revolution, it will not be enough for the United States to focus on building capacity—more funding, more production, faster acquisition. The country’s civilian and defense leaders will have to more fundamentally question the ideas that have long shaped the U.S. military and its campaigns. The United States’ delay in adopting the new generation of drones is a product of strong convictions that it acquired over the past 60 years of fighting wars: that it could, and should, leverage remotely operated technology to win quick conflicts fought from a distance. The United States believed that it could rely on relatively expensive drone technology to save pilots’ lives, deliver real-time intelligence straight to decision-makers, and enable precision targeting.

Now, U.S. leaders are under pressure to adapt to a new way of war already emerging in European and Middle Eastern conflicts. Other countries’ use of drones is changing battlefield dynamics, meaning that the kind of low-casualty campaigns for which the U.S. drone force is built may well become less prevalent. Before rushing to invest in a fresh wave of technologies, however, U.S. defense planners will need to review fundamental beliefs and assumptions that guided their acquisitions over the last half century. They will have to reconsider the American public’s tolerance for casualties, reevaluate long-standing procurement processes, and wrestle with the different services’ tendency to push for bigger, pricier systems. First and foremost, U.S. leaders will need to articulate a new theory of victory that considers how drone technologies can help the United States achieve strategic success.

The modern U.S. military has long sought to develop technology to make wars more precise, more efficient, and less risky—both for American leaders and for the troops they send to war. As early as 1965, President Lyndon Johnson told his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, to find a technological solution for dangerous reconnaissance missions in what was becoming an unpopular war in Vietnam: “I don’t........

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