In a new analysis, The National Interest has lifted the veil on a reality that has been whispered for months in U.S. security circles: the United States has entered a phase of structural lag in its drone competition with China. According to the report, the U.S. military will ultimately be able to produce as many as 1mn drones a year—a number that may sound large at first glance, but compared with China’s 8mn-unit capacity, it merely underscores the depth of Washington’s industrial and technological shortfall.

The modern battlefield has been transformed in recent years. Conflicts in the Caucasus, Africa, West Asia and Ukraine have demonstrated that cheap, expendable drones have become a central pillar of warfighting. The United States—long reliant on high-end, high-cost drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper—has now realized that the era of such premium platforms is over and that the age of mass-produced drone warfare has begun.

Despite this shift, America’s current production capacity is only 50,000 drones per year—an output that would not even sustain a few months of medium-intensity conflict. For this reason, the U.S. military has launched an expansive program dubbed “Sky Foundry,” a public–private effort to fully localize production of key components such as engines, sensors, batteries and electronic boards. Washington is effectively seeking to escape its dependence on China—a dependence that today covers a significant share of the world’s critical drone components and, as analysts put it, constitutes a strategic vulnerability for the United States.

But The National Interest stresses that this path is not an easy one. Building the infrastructure needed for mass production will take months and cost billions of dollars. Reporting by Defense News also shows that establishing production lines in U.S. arsenals such as Rock Island is complex and time-consuming. Moreover, in wartime conditions, attrition rates for expendable drones could become so high that the military’s annual needs might exceed even the one-million-unit mark.

Globally, Russia and Ukraine each manufacture roughly 4mn drones per year—output driven by the extreme demands of their ongoing conflict. China, for its part, leverages its vast industrial supply chain to produce not only civilian drones but also to rapidly militarize them and deploy them in large quantities on the battlefield.

These realities have led experts to warn that, in the event of a future war between major powers, the United States would find itself in a disadvantageous position: lacking the necessary supply chain, lacking the industrial scale of its rivals, and lacking sufficient experience in large-scale drone warfare.

Even so, if the U.S. military succeeds in localizing the supply chain, accelerating industrial production and integrating expendable drones into its force structure, it could partially close this gap and gain greater tactical flexibility in future conflicts. But the path ahead is difficult, costly and lengthy—and it leaves one fundamental question hanging: can the United States close its drone gap with China?