Pentagon readies new battery strategy amid growing drone demands
Military use of drones for air, land, and sea is booming—and so is the need to power them. So the Pentagon is working on a strategy for how it sources and buys batteries—including the critical minerals they require—which officials expect to release in 2026.
This strategy will be an update to a lithium ion battery strategy published in 2023 “that laid out the groundwork for how we were going to address battery challenges in the department,” including working with other government agencies, allies and partners, Eric Shields, the senior battery advisor in the Pentagon’s industrial base policy office, told reporters Friday.
Congress mandated a department-wide battery strategy in the 2025 annual defense policy bill. The goal is to have the new strategy signed by March 2026.
“What we know is, especially from the battlefield in Ukraine, that batteries are really important. They're important for enabling capabilities like drones, communications, and many other things that we need to fight and win. It's important for the department to have secure supply chains for these and…really important that we have standards, because that's one way that we're going to tackle some of these challenges,” Shields said. “And you can see clearly in executive orders coming down on drone dominance and security, you can see guidance coming down on the importance of critical minerals to the administration that these are priorities and are going to need resources to make progress.”