Key Points and Summary – America faces a twin readiness crunch: drone proliferation on land and shipyard shortfalls at sea. AI-enabled UAS now deliver cheap, scalable mass that can overwhelm legacy air defenses, while immature counter-UAS systems, training gaps, and data stovepipes slow the U.S. response.
-At sea, GAO warns shipbuilding and repair capacity can’t meet Navy plans; aging yards and deferred maintenance create a growing backlog that erodes surge power.
PACIFIC OCEAN (Oct. 1, 2024) The Independence-class littoral combat ship USS Mobile (LCS 26) comes alongside the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) for a fueling-at-sea, Oct. 1, 2024. Theodore Roosevelt, flagship of Carrier Strike Group 9, is underway conducting routine operations in the U.S. 3rd Fleet area of operations. An integral part of U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. 3rd Fleet operates naval forces in the Indo-Pacific and provides he realistic, relevant training necessary to execute the U.S. Navy’s role across the full spectrum of military operations – from combat operations to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. U.S. 3rd Fleet works together with our allies and partners to advance freedom of navigation, the rule of law, and other principles that underpin security for the Indo-Pacific region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Richard Tinker)
-Meanwhile, adversaries are fielding drones by the hundreds daily.
-Without rapid counter-UAS scaling, interoperable networks, and a rebuilt industrial base to sustain the fleet, U.S. deterrence will continue to decay across domains.
America’s Military Edge Is Crumbling: Blame Drones and Shipyard Backlogs
The U.S. Navy and Army are both facing a similar crisis that threatens America’s global strategic posture. On land, the U.S. Army risks being outsmarted by the rapid proliferation of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that provide adversaries with a cheap way of overwhelming and taking out advanced, expensive aircraft and military assets.
At sea, the U.S. Navy is struggling to build and maintain the number of warships and vessels the nation requires, hampered by industrial base shortfalls and high maintenance demands.
Unless these issues are addressed soon and in tandem, American deterrence could well be eroded, leaving the United States exposed in a high-intensity, multi-domain conflict.
America may have the technical edge, but a combination of AI, drones, and lagging domestic infrastructure could soon turn our fortunes around.
The Navy Isn’t Ready
Drone technology has been around for some time, but only in recent years have these kinds of assets become more commonly used.
And, we now have the artificial intelligence required to make them more useful. Massive advances in robotics, autonomy, and even miniaturization—the process of making hardware smaller—have transformed drones from niche assets into crucial, even central, weapons of war.
The Department of Defense’s December 2024 Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems has described UAS proliferation as an urgent and enduring threat to U.S. personnel and infrastructure, noting that it is rapidly “changing the character of conflict.”
Meanwhile, the Navy’s ship-construction, repair, and maintenance infrastructure is under mounting stress.
A report by the Government Accountability Office noted that the naval shipbuilding and repair industrial base is struggling, and that American companies “may not be able to take on unplanned work due to infrastructure or workforce limitations.” The report noted that a dry dock of the right size “may not be empty when needed” – meaning America could be left vulnerable in a large-scale conflict.
Hypersonic Missile. Image Credit: U.S. Military.
Additionally, the report noted that America’s industrial base “has not met the Navy’s goals in recent history.”
“The Navy’s shipbuilding plans have consistently reflected a larger increase in the fleet than the industrial base has achieved. Yet, the Navy continues to base its goals on the assumption that the industrial base will perform better on cost and schedule that it has historically,” the report continues, adding that infrastructure and workforce challenges “have made the Navy’s goals difficult to accomplish.”
Worse? There’s already a backlog. Deferred maintenance for surface ships alone increased from $1.7 billion USD in 2021 to $2.3 billion in 2022 – down from $2 billion in 2023.
Then there’s the aging shipyard infrastructure to consider, too.
The Navy is therefore constrained not only by how many ships it can build, but also by how many it can sustain and repair promptly.
In a protracted war, that spells trouble: these constraints massively degrade readiness. That’s a problem that can only get worse as China rapidly expands its own infrastructure and technological capabilities.
Cheap Drones Are Here
While Russia and China cannot yet fully compete with the United States in terms of modern military aircraft, low-cost drones are changing the power balance. Russia recently unleashed more than 700 drones in a single night against Ukraine, and stories like that are becoming increasingly common.
Analysts estimate that Russian drone production has increased to as many as 350 long-range drones per day, with plans to raise that number to 500.
For the U.S. Army and Air Force, countering that threat presents a number of serious structural and doctrinal challenges. First, there’s the fact that cheap drones now threaten high-value U.S. platforms. The Army’s doctrine currently focuses on traditional air-defense assets – and that needs to change.
Then there’s the fact that many counter-UAS systems are immature and not backed by the necessary training. American service personnel are more experienced than Chinese counterparts, for example – but when it comes to drones, that’s not necessarily true.
A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched from the Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska in Kodiak, Alaska, during Flight Experiment THAAD (FET)-01 on July 30, 2017 (EDT). During the test, the THAAD weapon system successfully intercepted an air-launched, medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) target.
America lacks data interoperability, mature systems, experience, and infrastructure required to compete with the near-peer adversaries who are already doing far more, far more quickly.
Look at Russia, for example: Ukrainian intelligence and open-source data estimates that Russia is planning to produce 2 million first-person-view (FPV) drones and 30,000 long-range and decoy drones by the end of this year. It’s clear that Russia is preparing for saturation drone warfare – and while it may currently be preoccupied with Ukraine, that experience is hugely valuable for its military.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is not yet fielding drones at anywhere near this scale.
The lesson here is simple: if America doesn’t rebuild its industrial backbone and adapt to the rapid pace of drone warfare and development, it will soon find technological superiority means nothing on the battlefield.
About the Author:
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society. His latest book is The Truth Teller: RFK Jr. and the Case for a Post-Partisan Presidency.
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