Drones and ammunition: Army chief hands lawmakers $4.3 billion wish list for FY26

WASHINGTON — Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George has delivered a $4.3 billion unfunded wish list to lawmakers detailing funding gaps in the munitions, air defense and small drone arenas.

“As seen on battlefields all over the world, the character of war is evolving rapidly,” the four-star general wrote in this year’s Unfunded Priorities List, obtained by Breaking Defense. “Our Army must adapt to meet the challenges ahead, and this is reflected in the Army’s FY26 President’s Budget (PB) submission.”

While George goes on to defend the service’s $197.4 billion request for next year, he notes several critical areas that could use additional funding.

An additional $581 million, he notes, could be used to acquire small drones and counter-unmanned aerial systems since both are “changing faster than our budget can react.”

The service is also moving ahead with advanced manufacturing capabilities, like 3D printing, and could use an additional $46 million to reduce reliance on “unsteady supply chains” and improve the “security posture.”

As for weapon stockpiles, George identifies two lines that could use “additive” funding: the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) line could use an additional $324 million, while $300 million more could be spent modernizing the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) line.

While the Army chief does not dive into how additional PrSM and PAC-3 funding would impact readiness, weapon stockpiles are again a hot topic. On Monday President Donald Trump said the US would keep sending Ukraine mostly “defensive weapons,” days after reports emerged that the US had halted shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions due to concerns that US stockpiles may have fallen too low.

While Geroge’s unfunded priority list to lawmakers did not mention the need for additional funds for other munitions lines, the service is continuing to work on plans to shore up stockpiles of other weapons, like 155mm artillery shells.

The goal had been to produce 100,000 155mm rounds by October, but the service is now expecting a six-month delay, Army spokesman Steven Warren told reporters today. The service, he said, is only producing about 40,000 rounds per month and does not expect to hit that 100,000 figure until spring 2026.

Last week, Breaking Defense first reported that the service is considering scrapping General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (GD-OTS) management of three new 155mm artillery round production lines in Mesquite, Texas, and sent the company a show cause letter. (A spokesperson for GD-OTS declined to comment for that report.)

Warren did not point to problems at the Mesquite facility as the sole reason for scaling production.

“It’s a lot of things causing the delay,” Warren said.

“Pieces and parts of that artillery shell are manufactured in multiple locations across the country, and then they come together for final assembly, so any one of those points along the way can create a delay so there is no one we’re not going to finger one single spot,” he added. 

Meanwhile, in a separate budget document also obtained by Breaking Defense, the Army also sought $21.6 million in Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding for five AI and autonomy projects: $5 million to demo a robotic repair system for artillery, $5 million for natural language processing of intelligence data, $5 million to counter so-called adversarial AI, $3.2 million for signals intelligence algorithms, and $3.4 million to strengthen its AI development “pipeline” overall.