Pentagon races to field pocket-sized kamikaze drones before next spring
The US Air Force wants suicide drones light enough for a single operator to sprint with, yet lethal enough to gut a Russian tank column. A solicitation quietly posted last week gives industry 17 April to deliver prototypes that can be flung skyward in under 60 seconds, streak 20 km, and detonate a 3-kg fragmentation warhead on a dime.
Inside the 13,6 kg backpack that could change close combat
Two drones, one ground station, total weight 13,6 kg — that is the entire kit AFSOC expects Green Berets to lug across river crossings and up mountain ridgelines. Once unpacked, each 4,5 kg airframe must self-launch without catapults or runways, loiter 15–30 min, then dive-bomb GPS coordinates supplied by a 4G/LTE handset jumping frequencies in real time. Off-the-shelf parts are mandatory; anything stamped “Made in China” is disqualifying. Translation: a DJI heart transplant is out, Sierra Wireless modems and Texas Instruments chips are in.
The timing is not casual. Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive proved that $400 FPV racers can mission-kill $4 million T-90s when paired with 2 kg of RDX. Russian electronic-warfare crews promptly jammed every civilian band within 40 km, forcing Ukrainian pilots to fly suicidal “blind drops” through smoke. USAF planners watched, took notes, and now demand frequency-agile radios plus GPS backup that can stomach spoofing. They also want enough range to keep launch crews outside the blast radius of Krasukha-4 jammers — hence the 20 km stretch goal.
71 Million reasons the navy is watching from the pier
While AFSOC hunts for throw-away drones, the Navy just poured $71 million into an AI maintenance contract that will let robots crawl through bilge tanks and weld cracked hull plates at 2 a.m. without a human in a respirator. The parallel tracks tell the same story: fewer bodies in harm’s way, faster turnaround, cheaper attrition. A Marine captain stationed in Okinawa put it cruder: “If I can trade a $30 k drone for a $3 m Buk radar, I’ll make that swap every single sortie.”
The 101st Airborne already ran live-fire rehearsals last month at Fort Campbell: Gray Eagles provided overwatch while attritable “Battlefield Enablers” painted grid squares for HIMARS rockets. The new twist is the hand-launch tier — platoons will soon carry death in a Pelican case instead of calling air support that arrives 45 minutes late.
Contractors have six weeks to submit white papers. After that, the Air Force will down-select, strap inert warheads to airframes, and fly them against derelict BRDMs on the Nevada Test and Training Range. The shoot-off winner gets a production order before the leaves turn brown.
Bottom line: by Christmas, a backpack that today holds granola bars and night-vision goggles could instead cradle two miniature cruise missiles. The enemy will not see the pilot — because there is not one.