WASHINGTON — As the Trump administration looks to spawn drone production lines at home, nearly 100 company representatives and government officials converged on the Eisenhower Executive Office Building today for the first White House Drone Dominance event.
In total, officials from roughly 40 companies gathered next to the White House to hear from an array of government officials including National Security Council Senior Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, and Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler.
“The cavalry arrived here to meet your cavalry in private industry to make sure that we are not drone sufficient, from parity, but drone dominant,” Michael told the audience.
The day was designed to be part of a larger, government approach to shore up drone production at a time when industry is working to comply with DoD needs, FAA rules and a new executive order essentially giving companies until the start of 2027 to stop using critical materials and minerals from Russia, Iran, North Korea and most notably China.
For the defense sector, Michael promised additional forthcoming investments similar to a recent Office of Strategic Capital “conditional loan” to Performance Drone Works for $820 million.
“In the next two weeks, you’ll see more of those deals,” he added. “We’re building up capacity in America to ensure the supply chain is resilient and can serve your needs.”
Following initial morning remarks, company participants could visit a fair-style event with tables manned by individual government offices (i.e., DoD’s Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for autonomy, Department of Commerce, SBA Export-Import bank of the US, Department of Homeland Security, the FAA and more) had set up a table for companies to visit and talk.
A White House official later explained that the event — designed to focus on expanding all types of domestic drone production — included participation by an array of companies manufacturing components such as batteries, cameras, thermal sensors and motors.
Today’s event came just over 14 months since President Donald Trump signed the “Unleashing American Drone Dominance” executive order in June 2025. The next month Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a related directive designed to cut through bureaucratic red tape and accelerate drone production and fielding.
In the intervening months, the Pentagon has moved out on a number of fronts to push the initiative forward. For example, the department recently established the DPRM for autonomy, detailed plans to spend nearly $55 billion on its replacement for the Biden-era Replicator initiative that is called the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG), and the Drone Dominance program in the spotlight today.
The Drone Dominance program is billed as an avenue for spending $1 billion over two years on small, attack drones. Pentagon officials are running gauntlet-style competitions to vendors and place orders. For example, Gauntlet 1 focused on small, one-way attack drones and according to the Leaderboard, 11 companies have received deals to provide 24,320 aerial weapons.
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For Gauntlet 2, the department invited 19 to head out to Fort Carson, Colo. this month to demo their drones with various lethal payloads, and the top performers could receive a share of the 60,000 platforms the department expects to order from that round, according to the website.
This article was updated on 8/20/2026 at 3:25 pm Eastern to include additional details from a White House official.