The US Army announced this week that it has successfully 3D-printed a drone-based warhead prototype, and successfully used that weapon to make something explode.
In a press release, the military called the weapon “a lightweight, powerful, and lethal warhead that could be deployed from a small, agile drone.” In a video posted April 21 and captioned only “Multi-Purpose,” a drone blows up a makeshift bunker on a military testing site.
3D-printed drones and drone-based weapons are fairly new, and they’re having a bit of a moment in the American military limelight. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who President Donald Trump calls “the drone guy,” told lawmakers last week he has learned a great deal from Ukraine’s use of cheap and easily replicable drones, and is eager to apply those lessons to the United States’ wars. (Per reporting from The Economist in 2023, Ukraine has also used ChatGPT to build bombs.)
The Ukrainian military has “fundamentally changed the approach to warfare,” Driscoll said during a congressional hearing Thursday. Iran, too, has reportedly used cheap Shahed drones—$20,000 each—to take out million-dollar American and Israeli missiles. Now, the US may adopt similar technology. “The United States Army is a beacon of transformation,” Driscoll said. “Imagine what we could do if we weren’t bound by the red tape!”
This latest 3D-printed warhead, called the BRAKER, is part of a larger push towards high-tech, cheap munitions. At SpaceX’s Stargate campus in mid-January, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urged the military and weapons-tech contractors to “accelerate like hell.” And as the Pentagon budget is slated to crest $1 trillion for the first time ever this year, the military is pushing to triple drone-related spending to $74 billion.
As the United States continues to bombard Iran—killing thousands of people, and spending, at last count, nearly $60 billion doing so—the military is looking for cheaper ways to mass-produce war from a distance. That might be why US News and World Report thinks drone stocks are worth buying.
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