The Pentagon could be about to make a $55 billion mistake

The Pentagon’s $54.6 billion investment in the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group is the largest single commitment to autonomous warfare in history. Its scale should be applauded.

For years, the U.S. military acknowledged the transformative potential of unmanned and autonomous systems while underinvesting in them. At $55 billion, this dramatic shift approaches the scale of an entire military service.

But the magnitude of the commitment also raises the stakes of getting it wrong. And early indicators suggest the Pentagon may risk repeating a mistake it has made before — one that cost lives, delayed operational effectiveness, and squandered years of strategic advantage.

In the early years of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, the military began acquiring large numbers of Predator drones. The focus of procurement was almost entirely on the platform itself — the airframe, the sensors, and the communications links that enabled remote operation. The implicit assumption was that technology, by itself, entailed capability. It did not.

Each Predator combat air patrol of continuous surveillance required nearly 150 personnel, including pilots, sensor operators, communications technicians, armaments experts, imagery analysts, maintenance crews, operations planners, linguists, and additional intelligence professionals. As demand for drone coverage surged, the limiting factor was not the number of aircraft but of the trained personnel and the organizational structure to enable them.

As Secretary of Defense Bob Gates observed, the biggest challenge with unmanned systems was manning them.

Eventually, the Air Force created an........

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