Pentagon Says It Sent More Than 25,000 Drones and Counter-Drone Systems to CENTCOM This Year

The Pentagon said on Nov. 4 that its Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems had delivered more than 25,000 CENTCOM drones and other unmanned and counter-drone systems this year, at a cost of about $782 million. The figure is the department’s own tally. It is dominated by counter-drone equipment, not attack drones, and it should be read as a claimed delivery total, not as an independent count of systems now in use in the Iran war theater.

What the Pentagon says it delivered

A Nov. 4 Department of War release, and a same-day Pentagon News article by C. Todd Lopez, gave the same breakdown for 2026 deliveries to the CENTCOM area of responsibility:

• Over 1,300 one-way attack unmanned aerial vehicles, which the release described as providing “precision deep-strike mass.”
• Over 100 unmanned surface vessels and unmanned underwater vessels, described as expanding maritime reconnaissance and strike.
• More than 24,000 counter-unmanned aerial systems, fielded through Joint Interagency Task Force 401, which the department said created “a dense, multi-layered defensive shield” for forward-deployed forces.

By The Boston Report’s addition of those three minimums, 24,000 plus 1,300 plus 100 equals 25,400, which matches the department’s “more than 25,000” headline if each line is treated as a floor. The official materials do not give exact counts, unit prices, or a country-by-country distribution, and they do not say how many of the systems have been expended, lost or kept in storage. An Institute for National Security Studies situation report on U.S. forces in the region, published Nov. 8, cited the same Pentagon office for “more than 25,000 systems” delivered to CENTCOM in 2026, including “over 24,000 counter-drone systems” and “over 1,300 LUCAS one-way attack drones,” which INSS said had already been used in the Strait of Hormuz, plus “over 100” unmanned surface and underwater vehicles. The LUCAS name and the Hormuz use are INSS’s account of the Pentagon figures; the department’s own Nov. 4 release did not use the LUCAS name in the passages reviewed here.

A new office, and a plan for a new command

Pentagon News said the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems was established in July, bringing together JIATF-401, the War Department Innovation Unit and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group. Owen West, identified in the release as CEO of Project Agincourt and DRPM-UxS, and in the news story as the office’s director, said, “Under Secretary Hegseth’s direction, we are moving at the speed of modern combat to equip our forces with decisive, affordable mass.” He said the office was “established to cut through red tape and put lethal technology directly into the hands of our frontline troops” and that “the thousands of systems operating across CENTCOM this year are just the beginning.” That last phrase is West’s claim that thousands of the systems are already operating; the department did not publish a separate operational count.

In September, Hegseth broadened the office’s mission with Project Agincourt, an effort to stand up an Autonomous Warfare Command, or AUTOWARCOM, as a four-star functional combatant command by Oct. 1, 2027, the Pentagon articles said. The project is led by West and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser, the office’s chief operating officer. Last month, they sent an open letter to industry saying, “We are on the clock,” and that Agincourt “must quickly remove the barriers that constrain the initiative of our service members.” The command does not yet exist; October 2027 is the department’s stated target.

The same Pentagon News article said the department has invested more than $6 billion in unmanned systems over the past year and has been running industry “gauntlets” to buy large numbers of low-cost drones. In the first gauntlet, which ended in July, 12 vendors were asked to collectively produce 30,000 drones at $5,000 each, totaling $150 million, the article said. A second gauntlet, scheduled to end in January, involves 10 vendors and a government plan to buy about 60,000 units at $5,000 each. By the end of a fourth gauntlet in January 2028, the department said the number ordered in that series would rise to 150,000 and the price would drop to $2,300 per drone. Those gauntlet figures are department plans and first-round results as reported by Pentagon News; they are broader than the $782 million CENTCOM delivery tally and should not be added on top of it without double-counting.

What the numbers do not show

The 25,000-system headline is easy to misread. More than 24,000 of the reported deliveries are defensive counter-drone systems, not one-way attack aircraft. The attack-UAV and maritime portions, as reported, are in the low thousands and low hundreds. The department’s language about flipping “the battlefield cost-exchange ratio” and about “combat-ready, mass-producible” systems is its own characterization. The Boston Report has not independently inspected the deliveries.

The fielding is part of a wider U.S. posture in the CENTCOM region, including the naval blockade of Iranian ports and the recent creation of Task Force Iron Gate to work on Iran’s land and Caspian routes. Counter-drone training has also continued in the United States, including a recent drill at MacDill Air Force Base, where CENTCOM is headquartered and where JIATF-401 has been part of the same unmanned-systems organization. Those are related efforts, not additional deliveries on top of the 25,000 figure.

Sources

• U.S. Department of War: DRPM-UxS Deliver Over 25,000 Autonomous and Counter-Unmanned Systems to CENTCOM AOR (Nov. 4, 2026)
• Pentagon News (C. Todd Lopez): Centcom Benefits From Project Agincourt, Drone Dominance Efforts (Nov. 4, 2026)
• Institute for National Security Studies: U.S. Force Posture in the Middle East vis-à-vis Iran, Nov. 1–7, 2026 (published Nov. 8)