Technology

Pentagon CTO Highlights U.S. Drone Shortcomings as Ukraine Innovates on Battlefield

By TOI Tech Desk

Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s technology chief, said the United States was unprepared for the rise of modern drone warfare and admitted that Ukraine had to develop some of the battlefield technologies it needed because the U.S. could not provide them. Speaking at the WSJ Tech Conference in Napa, California, Michael explained that the conflict between Ukraine and Russia exposed significant gaps in America’s military preparedness and accelerated efforts to expand the country’s drone capabilities.

"We were caught flat‑footed by the drone warfare in Ukraine and Russia," Michael said. He added that the U.S. was not prepared because it "just didn’t imagine it." The Defense Department is now focused on preparing for future conflicts and anticipating how warfare could evolve.

Michael acknowledged that while the United States provided substantial support to Ukraine during its war with Russia, Ukrainian forces often had to create their own solutions on the battlefield. "We helped the Ukrainians a ton, but they invented what they actually needed because we didn’t have it," he said.

The U.S. built about 1,000 drones under the previous administration; its stockpile is now around 500,000. That is still a small fraction of the eight million to 10 million drones Ukraine estimates it will build this year, as its war with Russia nears a fifth year.

Project Meridian, a Pentagon initiative, is tasked with examining what future warfare could look like, including potential conflicts underground and in space. The initiative includes participation from industry figures such as Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, and Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril Industries.

Michael said the military remains conservative about using artificial intelligence in combat. Developing targets still depends more on intelligence reports, satellite imagery and other human‑led investigation than on AI, he said, adding that the U.S. is not very sophisticated at AI‑generated targeting. He declined to comment on the U.S. strike in Iran last February that hit a girls’ school the U.S. had mistaken for a military target, which killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children. The U.S. has not released the findings of its investigation, and planning for the strike involved an AI targeting system. Michael said there must be appropriate human judgment at every level.

He reiterated his criticism of AI company Anthropic, which the Defense Department earlier designated as a national security threat. He said it was not difficult for the Pentagon to stop using Anthropic’s models and noted that the department continues to use AI models from Google, OpenAI and Grok on its networks.

On the global AI race, Michael argued that the United States maintains an advantage over China thanks to its access to advanced semiconductors and greater data‑centre capacity. According to Michael, Beijing remains approximately six months to a year behind the United States in AI development, although he indicated that competition between the two countries remains intense.