“That’s The Jetsons that’s coming to life,” he told more than a dozen drone companies who met with administration leaders at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Tuesday morning. “That is the future, and it will be built here in America. Not only for Americans, but we must dominate the world market.”

The relatively low cost of drones makes it more feasible for smaller companies to enter manufacturing. The timeline for evolution and development is also shorter than has been the norm for the Pentagon to acquire new systems and equipment, which benefits the smaller companies that have traditionally been involved in defense procurement.

Funding mechanisms are also available for companies from the Department of War and the Small Business Administration. The Pentagon has also removed some of the red tape involved in contracting and the overall department’s bureaucracies to further help these companies scale their capabilities to meet demand.

“Now we’re here because of President Trump’s commitment and his speed to advancing our national security is really historic, and the SBA is here because it’s the agile small businesses who are on the front lines of America’s condensed industrial base,” SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said.

Last month, the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital announced it had agreed to a conditional loan commitment of up to $820 million to Performance Drone Works to establish a high-volume domestic manufacturing capacity for critical drone components.

“We must dominate the world drone market,” Gorka said. “We have no other option because the future of aviation is unmanned. There are some companies, big legacy companies, who don’t get it. Well, they will die, like the dinosaurs.”

A major aspect of achieving drone dominance for the United States is ensuring the supply chain is domestic, has no chokepoints, and does not involve adversaries, such as China, which could throttle U.S. capability to resupply in a time of conflict. The administration is trying to eliminate that American vulnerability.

China possesses a major chunk of the global drone market, as well.

“Drones are already used by many American farmers, but most of those drones come from foreign countries that may not have the best interest of the American farmer at heart,” Stephen Vaden, the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, said at the event on Thursday. “Indeed, if you read the news, you probably saw that one of our foreign allies recently found the drones that he was using were basically phoning home to a foreign country for their Wi-Fi. We cannot have foreign adversaries having access to what our agricultural equipment produces.”

As Vaden referenced, the U.K. Ministry of Defense confirmed this month that cameras on the Royal Navy’s sea drones had Chinese components that reportedly sent communications to an IP address in China. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense said a thorough investigation found “no evidence” of its systems being compromised by the transmissions. Nevertheless, the incident demonstrates the threat.

“We’re building up capacity in America to ensure the supply chain is resilient,” said Emil Michael, undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering. “What you’ll see from us this term in this moment under this president is expanded defense industrial base with the help of Administrator Loeffler, the help of the Office of Strategic Capital and the Defense Innovation Unit … that these drones are made in America, delivered for American national security, and we at Department of War are doing our part.”

Domestically, the military is responsible for the defense of bases. The Department of Homeland Security is also heavily involved in defending against drone attacks. And both need to coordinate with the Federal Aviation Administration as well to ensure public and private aircraft are safe from errant drones and to implement drone protection measures.

The U.S. has not seen a drone-involved mass casualty event domestically, though the FBI thwarted a planned attack targeting the UFC fight at the White House in July, and there were hundreds of drones intercepted during last month’s World Cup that primarily took place in the U.S.

Drones have also been tracked flying over sensitive military sites with little public explanation in recent months.

US LAW ENFORCEMENT INTERCEPTED UNKNOWN DRONES OVER THE MASTERS AND MIAMI GRAND PRIX: MULLIN

There were multiple instances of unauthorized drone incursions in March over Barksdale Air Force Base, the home of the B-52 Stratofortress bombers, in Louisiana. There was also a drone incursion detected at an unspecified location in late February as the U.S. was beginning its opening attacks against Iran, according to Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, the commander of U.S. NORTHCOM.

In addition to concerns that an adversary could use drones, or drone swarms, to target U.S. bases or expensive systems on those bases, like radars and aircraft, there are also worries that an enemy could target American critical infrastructure.

“You have this drone activity that hasn’t become kinetic, and so we can use hope as a course of action that we hope this will never happen, but when it does, you should not be surprised, and we’re not trying to put a lot of fear in here,” former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ret. Gen. Charles Q Brown Jr. said last month at an event with the Center for a New American Security.