Before President Trump nominated Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense for the United States, Hegseth was a co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend,” a very pro-Trump cable news show that not surprisingly counts the president as one of its biggest fans.
And Hegseth recently put his experience as a television personality to good use, releasing a video on Friday declaring that the administration was going to “bolster the U.S. drone manufacturing base by producing thousands of American-made products.”
Hegseth said that America’s adversaries had manufactured “millions of cheap drones,” but the U.S. had been “mired in bureaucratic red tape” that limited its own manufacturing of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
But then Trump signed executive orders in June “unleashing American drone dominance,” Hegseth said.
And so Hegseth said he was “rescinding policies that stifle production” in order to “arm combat units with a variety of low-cost, American-crafted drones,” while also leveraging America's “world-leading engineers and AI experts.”
Hegseth’s video sent U.S.-based drone stocks soaring on Friday.
Unusual Machines (UMAC) surged 39.5%, while Red Cat (RCAT) jumped 26.4%. The former is up 40.6% over the past five days, while the latter has gained 48.8%.
In his executive orders, Trump said that building “a strong and secure domestic drone sector is vital to reducing reliance on foreign sources, strengthening critical supply chains, and ensuring that the benefits of this technology are delivered to the American people.”
The action taken by Trump was a clear response to the fact that China currently dominates the global drone market.
Red Cat released a statement after Trump issued his executive order saying that the action is “expected to remove regulatory barriers and modernize federal approval processes to prioritize U.S.-manufactured drones,” with additional provisions expanding “detection and mitigation authority, and streamlined regulations to accelerate the deployment of UAS across federal and commercial sectors.”
Brendan Stewart, VP of regulatory affairs at Red Cat, said that Trump’s orders “send a clear signal that the U.S. is serious about enabling a secure domestic drone industry that supports mission-critical outcomes for the U.S. and its allies.”
Meanwhile, Unusual Machines named Donald Trump Jr. to its advisory board in March, strengthening its own ties to the White House.
Trump Jr., who has no official role in his father’s administration, said in a statement after being named to the board that it is “obvious that we must stop buying Chinese drones and Chinese drone parts.”
However, while Hegseth said the U.S. would be manufacturing “thousands of American-made products,” it’s unclear how many new drones the Department of Defense will actually produce.
Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron Callon said in a note on Friday that although there is already “funding in the fiscal year 2026 DoD budget to scale drone production,” Hegseth’s announcements “didn’t call out any additional funding.”
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