Name: Can the U.S. military add enough drones to its fleet to compete with China?
Uploaded: 2023-12-06T05:00:00Z
Duration: 5 min 13 s
Description: The U.S. is racing to assemble a fleet of next-generation drones to stay competitive with China, as concerns rise about a potential conflict over Taiwan. WSJ explores whether the U.S. can work fast enough to deter its adversary in the South China Sea. Photo Illustration: MacKenzie Coffman

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The U.S. is racing to assemble a fleet of next-generation drones to stay competitive with China, as concerns rise about a potential conflict over Taiwan. WSJ explores whether the U.S. can work fast enough to deter its adversary in the South China Sea. Photo Illustration: MacKenzie Coffman

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Can the U.S. military add enough drones to its fleet to compete with China?

Shelby: The US military says it's planning to buy thousands of next generation drones to help counter China.

We have an opportunity now for a game changing shift that we have long pursued.

Shelby: For the Pentagon, it's not just a matter of gaining the technological advantage, it's a race against the clock. China has already militarized islands in the South China Sea and Chinese president Xi Jinping has ordered his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027 according to US intelligence. But will thousands of autonomous systems actually help the US deter and potentially even fight against China? Some experts have their doubts. China's military has grown so rapidly over the past decade that the US considers China its number one pacing challenge. While China's not ahead on all fronts, Beijing now has more ships, more troops, more missile launchers, and in some cases more sophisticated weapons than the US. Western officials are concerned that Beijing could use its new firepower to assert control over Taiwan and other parts of the West Pacific, which are critical to global trade and economic stability.

We must ensure the PRC leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression and concludes today is not the day.

Shelby: The US sees cheap unmanned systems as a way to gain the technological edge similar to how it leveraged GPS and satellite communications before other adversaries did in the past.

We have one of those moments right now and we're going to seize it.

Shelby: By deploying thousands of autonomous sea, land, air and space-based drones and pairing them with sensors, artificial intelligence, and even weapons, military leaders say they'll be able to see, plan for and act on threats much more quickly than they can now. But getting all these systems deployed quickly won't be easy. One of the biggest challenges for the United States is scaling up. At this factory in Mississippi, Ocean Aero says it has the ability to up production of its Triton drone boats, but the supply chain for many of these systems is complex. Drones for all domains can take weeks, if not months, to make. Plus, as the Pentagon seeks to buy thousands of unmanned systems, it will also have to contend with the boom in demand in the aerospace market that has left a shortage of skilled labor, raw materials and advanced parts. So how big of a challenge will it be for the Pentagon to acquire all of these drones, but even more importantly, integrate them?

It's gonna be a challenge and the fact that the Deputy Secretary of Defense herself is the leader of this effort, I think is essential.

Admiral Eric Olson spent four years as the head of US Special Operations Command. He's now on the board of Ocean Aero and is optimistic about the Pentagon's plans to use drones. What are the risks of moving too slowly or getting it wrong?

Well, you lose your edge and if you get it wrong, you have to recover from it. I expect we'll get it wrong early on, but almost every highly successful Pentagon project has been through, you know, a debris field of getting it wrong along the way. That's how we learn how to get it right.

Shelby: While the Pentagon says it's using existing programs and funding to buy drones quickly, some drone makers say that's not nearly enough to fund the kind of generational shift the US is aiming for. Many military experts are concerned that despite the US having a bigger official defense budget and more innovative commercial companies, China has a bigger manufacturing base. It's already the biggest manufacturer of civilian drones, including DJI drones that have been weaponized by both Russia and Ukraine. And China has proven that it can crank out new weapons and technologies. Can they scale faster than the US?

I think so, yes. Much faster.

Shelby: Lyle Goldstein has been researching Chinese drones and drone prototypes for years. He says like the US, Beijing is deeply interested in drones.

I've been watching the Chinese military industrial complex for a long time and they do have a lot of advantages. Not only obviously can they operate in secret and they only reveal things when they want to, they can move things incredibly quickly.

Shelby: Goldstein says China has already begun working on a so-called undersea Great wall that can power and dock maritime drones. And he says, the US effort to deploy drones may only go so far. Will that help the US keep pace with China?

If China's going forward in this realm and they are then we probably should too. But I am leery that the focal point of this seems to be a Taiwan scenario and there I'm skeptical. I just don't see it. There's a true discrepancy in firepower here, what China can bring to bear and what we can bring to bear, and I don't see how we get from from here to there.

Shelby: The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn't respond to requests for comment on this story. As for the Pentagon, it plans to issue a solicitation for unmanned systems in the coming days.

We've said before that conflict with the PRC is neither imminent nor inevitable. That remains our assessment. Deterrence, including across the Taiwan Strait, is real and strong and we're doing more than ever to keep it that way.