Army Chief Chosen By Pete Hegseth Cancels Experimental Drone Battalion

Acting Army Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve has decided to wind down an experiment in developing a drone battalion, according to reports. The experiment was formally set up in January, thought it had been doing some work throughout 2025, by tasking an existing airborne infantry battalion from the 173^rd Airborne Brigade. The idea was to field a unit dedicated to studying, designing, building, and applying small-scale drones for use in warzones. That's probably a good idea, considering that drones have proven to be a major power in modern conflicts. Iranian-made Shahed drones have blanketed the skies of both Ukraine and the Persian Gulf, used by Russia and Iran respectively. Developing tactics around this new fire seems important for a 21^st century military, but after less than a year in operation, America's drone unit is ending.

Why on earth is the Pentagon doing this? After all, the Army has already said it wants to buy one million drones in the next three years to achieve "drone dominance." The DoD is even developing a new long-range drone that looks suspiciously (exactly) like the Iranian Shahed. So it's not like the military doesn't understand that unmanned systems matter.

Instead, the real culprit here appears to be internal politics at best, or personal grudges at worst, according to the Wall Street Journal. For context, LaNeve is only the acting Army chief of staff. The previous chief, Gen. Randy George, was suddenly relieved of his post by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in April, without explanation. George was reportedly closely aligned with Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, per further Wall Street Journal reporting. Driscoll and Hegseth, apparently, do not get along and are constantly fighting battles over the direction of the Army. LaNeve, meanwhile, is a darling of the Trump administration and has shot up the ranks in the past year alone; he was Hegseth's senior military aide before he promoted him to acting chief.

LaNeve was formally the head of the prestigious 82^nd Airborne Division, but was more or less pushed out, per CBS News. Something clearly happened to make the Pentagon sour on him. Hegseth appears to have reversed that, pushing out George and many other officers, including no less than the chairman of the joint chiefs. Not only has that given LaNeve's career a massive boost, it's also put him in a position to determine the destiny of programs initiated by the previous brass.

From that position, he's cleaning house. Many of George's projects have been scrapped since LaNeve took over. So despite the clear necessity of drone expertise in a modern military, the George-era experiment with the battalion from the 173^rd is now over. The group of 600 soldiers will conduct an exercise in the early fall and then rotate back to being an airborne infantry unit again.

Long-term, it's unclear how long LaNeve's good fortune will stick with him. He isn't being nominated for actual Army chief of staff because too many Republican senators don't like him, which makes it sound like there may be a story here that isn't public knowledge. Potentially, the Trump administration could just keep him around as acting chief; or, they could nominate somebody else; or, they could pull over enough Congressional support to make him official. We'll see.

In the meantime, other drone-focused initiatives move forward. Central Command stood up a special operations unit dubbed Task Force Scorpion Strike last year, focused on building out unmanned attack capabilities. It has just announced Task Force Falcon Strike, intended to be a multinational force in its area of operations, the Middle East. From the sounds of it, no other countries have joined in just yet. Alliances there have been strained by the war in Iran. At the least, this shows that the Pentagon hasn't forgotten that drones matter. There are just politics to sort out first.