Soldiers cut Apache, Black Hawk purchases as drone warfare reshapes strategy

Military leaders signaled Wednesday that the heaviest fighting and recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are reshaping the service's air and missile defense strategy, prompting new reviews of helicopter programs and expensive Patriot interceptor programs.

The comments come as the Army's fiscal year 2027 budget request significantly reduces funding requests for helicopter purchases, including reducing Apache funding from about $361.7 million to about $1.5 million, Black Hawk funding from about $913 million to about $39.3 million and Chinook procurement from about 62 dollars, and the purchase of Chinook from 62 million dollars. autonomy and cost-effective battlefield technology.

The momentum for change is already extending beyond procurement. The Army previously announced plans to cut about 6,500 aviation positions in 2026 and 2027 — including pilots, flight attendants and maintainers — as leaders shift resources to unmanned systems and drone warfare.

It is not clear whether the procurement cuts will reduce aircraft fleet sizes, extend the service life of aging aircraft or delay scheduled replacement cycles.

Military leaders have suggested that battlefield lessons driving change are already shaping budget decisions, as the service redirects money away from traditional aircraft systems to drones, autonomy and low-cost systems.

“Definitely, as we look at the aircraft portfolio … we're re-looking at that,” Assistant Secretary of Defense Brent Ingraham said during a Pentagon news conference Wednesday.

Ingraham said the Army is also considering how traditional manned aircraft fit in with larger unmanned systems that are increasingly being manned by helicopters.

The proposed flight cuts have raised concerns on Capitol Hill.

During a recent Senate Armed Services committee hearing on May 12, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., warned that the Army's budget request included “zero Apache H-64s, Chinook Block IIs, and one UH-60 Black Hawk,” arguing that the service was dividing critical capabilities before confirming replacements.

“Your department's budget request cuts more than $5 billion from the industry base in the aviation sector alone, effectively closing all of the Army's current airfields,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, pressed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth during a May 12 House Appropriations hearing. “How did the department come to the conclusion that reducing the purchase of these military airfields strengthens rather than weakens the base of the aviation industry?”

Hegseth acknowledged that the Pentagon was reconsidering parts of the plan.

“There are some very good things in the Army Transformation Initiative, and there are things we need to revisit,” Hegseth told lawmakers during a House hearing after facing questions about the extent of the aircraft cuts.

Hegseth said Pentagon leaders are focused on making sure the Army doesn't create “airpower gaps” as it transitions to unmanned systems and next-generation technology.

The Colombian military opened its first drone fleet at the military base in Tolemaida, Colombia, on Oct. 10, 2025, to combat illegal armed groups that use drones in warfare. (Raul Arboleda/AFP)

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Military leaders say the rapid spread of cheap drones is forcing the military to rethink how it buys and deploys aircraft, missile defenses and battlefield technology.

“We know we don't want to continue to use the Patriot missile to shoot down cheap aircraft,” Ingraham said. “You have to get on the right side of the cost curve.”

Concerns have become more urgent after the US and its allies burned through a large number of expensive missile defense equipment during the Israel-Iran conflict and wider Middle East operations, fueling the Pentagon's concerns about the depletion of stocks and the long-term sustainability of relying on multimillion-dollar defense systems against cheap drones and missiles.

Officials also outlined a new joint drone and counter-drone marketplace designed to accelerate foreign military sales and establish interoperable systems across partner nations. Driscoll compared the effort to “the Amazon of war.”

Officials said the market is expected to be available to about 25 US allies and partners around the world, initially focusing on drone and counter-drone systems before expanding to other capabilities and countries.

The platform will only allow partners to buy US skills.

Military leaders signaled Wednesday that the heaviest fighting and recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are reshaping the service's air and missile defense strategy, prompting new reviews of helicopter programs and expensive Patriot interceptor programs. (Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)

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The Army is also launching a rapid competition to develop low-cost interceptors designed to counter drones and surface-to-air missiles without depleting millions of dollars in Patriot missile stocks.

Ingraham said the companies will have about 120 days after the upcoming industry event to demonstrate technologies ranging from rocket motors and seekers to fully integrated interceptor concepts.

“Even if you don't have it all down … bring it,” he said.

The reform effort reflects a growing concern within the Pentagon that cheap drones, autonomous systems and mass-produced weapons are rapidly changing the economic and survivability assumptions of modern wars, especially after the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have exposed the dangers of traditional concepts of weapons and heavy aircraft.

Military leaders have signaled that the more severe wars and recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are reshaping the service's air and missile defense strategy, prompting new reviews of helicopter systems and expensive Patriot interceptor systems. (Anthony Bailey/Handout via Reuters)

Military leaders are increasingly suggesting that future wars will rely less on manned platforms and more on large numbers of cheap, networked and fast-changing systems that can survive drone-filled battlefields.

Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll said at the hearing that the service is trying to fix what leaders see as decades of broken procurement processes that have left the military too slow to adapt to rapidly changing battlefield conditions.

“How do we go deep into the system to change the broken processes that have led to so many negative outcomes over the past 30 years?” Driscoll said.

Driscoll said the military has lost the trust of Congress after decades of procurement failures and budget overruns.

“The United States military lost the confidence of Congress somehow 30 years ago that we could do big new projects, keep on time, keep on budget,” he said.

He later referred to the now-cancelled M10 Booker armored vehicle program as an example of the type of procurement failure leaders try to avoid.

“If we go to Congress and say, 'Hey, trust us to develop a new stage. This one will not appear as a tank Booker, “said Driscoll.

Driscoll said the Army is already trying to install new capabilities on more accelerated timelines similar to the wartime adaptation cycles seen in Ukraine than the Pentagon's traditional procurement plans.

“When Operation Epic Fury started, we were able to begin the process of buying 13,000 Merops interceptors on the fifth day,” said Driscoll.

“On the tenth day, we had received a contract for something we had never bought before,” he added. “They were starting to enter the theater by the thousands on the 20th.”

Military officials also said the service is trying to quickly improve how weapons systems, sensors and battlefield networks communicate after studying Ukraine's ability to quickly integrate commercial and military technology during a war.

“The Ukrainians have been showing us how their open architecture allows information to flow between all the sensors and radars,” Driscoll said. “That's enabled a lot of things they can do that we can't do right now.”

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“Right now at Fort Carson, there are 450 engineers and programmers hacking all of our equipment,” he added.

“I have high hopes that within a month from now we will have hacked hundreds of pieces of equipment.”