WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has signed a new memo creating a Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager (DRPM) for autonomy, as part of a high-level effort to keep pace with adversaries’ drone programs, Breaking Defense has learned.
That role, which would report directly to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, would subsume a significant portion of unmanned systems efforts currently underway at the service level — including all ground vehicles, all small air vehicles and almost all sea vehicles — under one “czar.”
Known as DRPM-UxS, the job will serve as “the single joint integrator for all unmanned and autonomous system programs” within the Pentagon, per the memo, which was signed Monday and obtained by Breaking Defense.
“Adversaries collectively produce millions of unmanned systems each year across all Domains,” Hegseth wrote in the memo. “While global military unmanned systems production has skyrocketed over the last three years, the United States has been slow to field these capabilities at scale. Drones and autonomous systems are the most consequential battlefield innovation of this generation. The [Pentagon] must move at the speed this moment demands.”
Key points from the memo include:
