Anyone who has ever been issued a government credit card knows the lecture. Don’t buy alcohol. Don’t split a purchase to get around the limit. No escort services on the government purchase card. The list of forbidden transactions has grown so long that it sometimes feels like the card is useful only for printer paper and staplers. Now, in a twist that sounds like satire but is not, drones have been added to the ledger of things you can swipe for – not as a prohibited indulgence, but as an officially sanctioned battlefield experiment.
The U.S. military has quietly found a shortcut through its own bureaucracy, for once. Rather than running every new drone or counter-drone device through years of centralized procurement cycles, certain units are now buying equipment directly with government credit cards. What might sound like an innocuous swipe at checkout has become a substitute for formal testing, raising questions about oversight, safety, and whether reform has tipped into recklessness.
The Policy Shift
The change traces back to a July 2025 memo signed by War Secretary Pete Hegseth titled “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance.” In it, he reclassified drones under 55 pounds as “consumables.” That single word shifted drones into the same category as ammunition, rather than durable aviation assets, and it freed commanders to purchase them with government purchase cards instead of waiting for a contract award. Reporting at the time described how the directive ordered the services to strip away policies creating layers of red tape around buying, testing, and training with small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), while still holding units to cybersecurity standards and to the so-called “Blue List”– the catalog of trusted, U.S.-approved components meant to keep foreign-made systems out of the supply chain.
Field-Level Experimentation
Some officials have spoken candidly about what this looks like in practice. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told Fox News the 75th Ranger Regiment uses their corporate credit card to purchase things online to test. A process he admits is not traditional. The fact that a senior leader would describe the process so bluntly reflects how far the culture has shifted toward embracing direct, bottom-up experimentation.
The Case For Speed
Advocates defend this new approach by pointing to the speed of drone development worldwide. Commercial drones roll off production lines with new firmware and sensor packages constantly; adversaries in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown how quickly cheap airframes can be adapted to carry explosives or resist jamming. Mike Jernigan, a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, warned that if American units wait for traditional acquisition programs, they will always be training on outdated technology. By devolving authority, the Pentagon hopes soldiers can experiment in real time, discard what fails, and scale up what succeeds. Reformers also point out that this opens the door to smaller drone manufacturers who would otherwise be locked out by the complexity of defense contracting.
Oversight And Risk
The mechanism that speeds these experiments along is also their Achilles’ heel. Government purchase cards have a long track record of misuse, from split purchases to missing receipts, documented in inspector-general audits. A 2008 GAO audit found hundreds of thousands of dollars in casino and cruise line charges improperly billed to federal cards. A decade later, a DoD inspector general review uncovered widespread non-compliance, including purchases of electronics with no documentation. A February 2025 policy notice from the Pentagon specifically limited card use for UAS, underscoring the recognition that drones raise the stakes. When the same tool that once bought paper clips now buys flying machines with onboard cameras and radios, the potential for accountability failures grows sharper. Operational risks compound the financial ones: unsecured firmware, lack of interoperability, and supply headaches if every unit experiments with a different brand.
Reform In Progress?
Despite the headlines, no inspector-general report has yet proven fraud tied directly to drone purchases, and no congressional hearing has declared the experiment a scandal. What exists is a high-level policy change, candid admissions by senior leaders, and a historical backdrop of purchase-card abuse that makes watchdogs uneasy. Analysts have already questioned whether the deadlines and mandates in Hegseth’s memo are realistic without stronger oversight and funding.
Guardrails That Could Work
If the Pentagon wants credit card drone testing to survive scrutiny, it will need to build the kind of guardrails auditors have been demanding for decades. GAO has consistently urged tighter transaction-level tracking, better separation of duties, and required independent receipt and acceptance checks to stop cardholders from becoming their own reviewers. Inspector general audits of Army and Air Force card programs have shown that simple steps, like enforcing documentation standards and limiting the number of cardholders each approving official supervises, can dramatically reduce misuse. Studies of rapid acquisition in Iraq and Afghanistan have found that structured feedback loops, such as requiring short after-action reports on what worked and what failed, helped generate genuine innovation from costly dead ends. The lesson from all of these cases is not that purchase cards must be abandoned, but that they only deliver agility if paired with low-friction accountability.
The Price Of Plastic
The Pentagon has gambled that the agility of a credit card outweighs the risks of decentralization. History shows how quickly “rapid acquisition” can veer from lifesaving innovations to warehouses full of unused gear. Whether drones bought with corporate cards become a symbol of adaptation or of waste depends on whether each swipe leaves a traceable record and a tested result. In the end, the Department of War has chosen to buy time with plastic; its credibility will hinge on proving the purchase was more than an impulse buy.
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