A New Drone Branch of the US Army? Negative, Says Top Brass

Members of the House of Representative tabled legislation this month that included a proposal to create a new branch of the US Army dedicated to the rapidly expanding deployment of drones in conflict situations. This week, the country’s top military brass made it very clear they don’t support the idea.

The proposal was made as part of the 2025 defense authorization bill, which specifies the general organization and specific functions of the proposed division. In addition to overseeing all aspects of development and active deployment of the craft by US forces, the dedicated branch would also oversee counter-UAV activities. 

But this week, US Army General Staff Randy George testified to the Senate Appropriations Committee that he didn’t think the creation of a new branch was a good idea.

“I don’t think it would be helpful to have a separate drone branch,” George said of the proposal put forward by the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces as part of the 2025 authorization bill.

His reasoning is that with smaller drones still relatively recent and very quickly developing assets in military planning and deployment, it makes little sense to create a stand-alone branch of the US Army handling all aspects of use. Instead, he said, it would be more productive to permit existing divisions come up with the best use cases and provisioning partners on their own.

“For us, this is a capability that’s going to be, I think, resident in every formation at every echelon… not some separate piece,” George said. “I think we need that kind of flexibility. We’re actually doing that right now with our formations.”

Though the proposal to create a separate drone branch of the US Army is still in the formative stages, and could go either way, internal opposition represents a formidable force to be reckoned with. Backers of the idea were clearly inspired by Kyiv’s creation of an independent division within Ukraine’s military dedicated to UAV activity in February. 

The move reflects the enormous importance drones have played in Ukraine’s defense against Russia, and the increasingly critical role they’ll play in future conflicts. Many European nations are also considering adding dedicated UAV divisions to their armies. 

But in the US, George’s testimony this week marked the second negative view on pursuing establishment of a drone branch within the Army – at least for the foreseeable future.

“My view is that, you know, creating a corps or other institutional kind of structures to kind of get after it, in some way could take away some focus from some of the things that… we’re actually doing,” Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo said on Friday in a speech reported by DefenseScoop. “It’s important in my view to get after giving units, you know, these UAS capabilities to let them experiment… how they’re going to employ them at different echelons and to be able to understand, you know, how that affects the way that our formations will fight.”

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