Senate Holds Hearing, Vows to Kick Communist China Out of America’s Drone Supply Chain

The Senate Armed Services Committee holds a hearing on the U.S. small drone industrial base. (March 5, 2026)

[People News] The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on Thursday (March 5) to examine the current state and future development of the U.S. small drone industrial base, including the establishment of a drone supply chain independently developed by the United States. Some lawmakers vowed to completely remove “Communist China” from America’s drone supply chain.

U.S. drone production and deployment face difficulties

According to Voice of America, Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) said in his opening remarks that since the Russia-Ukraine war, the importance of small unmanned aerial systems (SUA) has continued to grow, and drones have now become central to reconnaissance, targeting, and strike missions. However, the U.S. drone industry faces difficulties in both production and deployment — the U.S. military and industry need low-cost drones, but because of concerns over supply-chain or software vulnerabilities, they cannot purchase them from Chinese companies.

Wicker pointed out: “China, using state subsidies, tens of billions of dollars in predatory pricing strategies, and state control over key supply chains, has captured more than 90 percent of the global non-military small drone market, and American drone companies have effectively been pushed out of the global market.” Wicker noted that because of weakened commercial demand, U.S. drones are far more expensive than Chinese drones, costing from 5 to 25 times more.

Wicker said this is similar to the difficulties the United States currently faces in the critical minerals and rare earth industries. Solutions to this problem include not only government appropriations and subsidies to procure American small drones, but also figuring out how to help the industry rapidly rebuild its supply chain.

He said: “Investment is only the first step. The free world must unite and stop rewarding China’s predatory behavior in the small drone industry.” Wicker said the United States will deliver 300,000 drones next year, and that this stable demand signal must continue for years and will become the cornerstone for the United States and its allies to build a supply chain.

Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Democrat Jack Reed (D-RI) pointed out that small unmanned systems have become a defining feature of modern warfare. In the large-scale combat operations that the United States and Israel are currently conducting against Iran, this includes deploying hundreds of one-way attack drones for airstrikes, while Iran has also launched drone attacks in its retaliatory strikes, causing casualties among U.S. military personnel. He said drones first emerged as a commercial technology, but have now become a decisive military capability, and it must be ensured that the United States is not caught unprepared.

Reed noted that completely removing Chinese components from the drone industry could be technically extremely challenging, because China not only dominates finished drone systems but also key components such as motors and batteries. He said the speed of the U.S. response to China’s drone systems industry cannot come at the cost of strategic coherence.

The Trump administration and Congress have already been taking action

The Trump administration and Congress had already previously taken measures to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign drones.

On June 6, 2025, President Donald Trump signed the executive order “Unleashing American Drone Dominance,” which explicitly required building a strong domestic drone industry in order to achieve the “de-Sinicization” of the supply chain.

On December 3 of the same year, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon had launched a $1 billion program to procure hundreds of thousands of small attack drones for the military.

In December 2024, Congress also passed a defense bill setting a deadline for the government to complete security reviews of Chinese drone manufacturers DJI and Autel by December 23, 2025. If the review determined that Chinese drones posed national security risks, the government was to prohibit them from selling new drones in the United States.

One of the witnesses, Owen O. West, senior adviser to the U.S. War Department’s “Drone Dominance Project,” said at the hearing that drones are the most important innovation on the battlefield in generations, and that President Trump, Secretary Hegseth, and the U.S. Congress together ended America’s period of “hesitation” in drone production.

“We are leveraging America’s world-leading engineers, entrepreneurs, and capital markets to procure at scale at competitive prices, and without delay. We prioritize ‘Buy American’ in order to expand this emerging but vital domestic industry,” West said. “Military personnel are both designers and evaluators, to ensure that drone capabilities can provide effective support for warfighters.”

Another witness, Travis Metz, manager of the War Department’s “Drone Dominance Project,” said that the project uses market mechanisms to incentivize industry to deliver high-performance small drones to warfighters at wartime speed and at scale, and that the project has two goals: to expand the scale of the U.S. small drone supply chain in order to reduce procurement costs, and to immediately provide large numbers of such drones to the different military branches in order to speed up their integration process. The U.S. War Department has committed $1.1 billion over the next 18 months for drone-system procurement, carrying out large-scale purchases based on real-combat evaluations by the various service branches.

He said the “Drone Dominance Project” is a typical case of the War Department conducting procurement at an up-to-date pace, using actual procurement, the entrepreneurial spirit of American industry, and capital to expand production scale while lowering unit prices, ensuring that the U.S. military has the number of expendable drones needed for modern warfare.

In response to a question from Senator Deb Fischer (R-NE) about how to improve U.S. drone manufacturing capacity, Metz said that the project’s fundamental goal is to build an American small-drone industry. One method includes persuading some of the world’s most advanced drone companies to shift production to the United States, so that American warfighters can use the best systems at scale.

Ensuring that Communist China is completely kicked out of America’s drone supply chain

Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) emphasized at the hearing that for many years he has worked to push the government to stop buying drones made in Communist China in order to protect U.S. national security. “Communist China is our enemy,” Scott said. “This has nothing to do with their people. The government of Communist China has chosen to be our enemy. We should not depend on them, for anything, and especially not on matters of national security.”

The “American Security Drone Act,” previously pushed by Scott, prohibits the purchase of drones manufactured or assembled by certain foreign entities identified as national security risks. That bill was incorporated into the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 and is aimed mainly at drones made in countries such as China.

“But we are still far from the goal. We must continue the fight to ensure that Communist China has no absolute control over our drone supply or over any military field. That is crucial to America’s security,” Scott said. “That means unleashing America’s manufacturing potential in the drone industry and in many other fields as well.”

In response to Senator Scott’s question about what measures can be taken to ensure that Communist China can be completely removed from America’s drone supply chain, Metz answered that the long-term goal of the project is to establish a drone supply chain entirely independently developed by the United States. In the second phase, which will begin in August, the use of any Chinese-made batteries or motors will be prohibited. The project will also implement rules that go beyond existing statutory restrictions and are stricter than those in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Ultimately, by 2027, all drones purchased or used by the War Department will come entirely from the United States or allied countries.
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