Retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus warned that militaries cannot wait five years to adapt to drone warfare, as the U.S. Army sets a fiscal 2028 target for selected autonomous systems.
Petraeus spoke Oct. 23 at the NDTV World Summit in New Delhi during a session on artificial intelligence and warfare. NDTV Profit reported his warning that militaries could not wait five years to redesign themselves; Petraeus said, “because we don’t have five years.”
At the summit, Petraeus argued that drones can expose military units to surveillance and attack, putting established battlefield maneuvers at greater risk, NDTV reported. He said the response must reach beyond buying unmanned aircraft: armed forces should rethink how they organize units, train troops and commanders, choose equipment, set personnel rules and work with defense companies. This builds on Petraeus’s earlier argument for changes beyond new weapons.
At an Oct. 16 event in Washington, Petraeus said, “software changes every week, hardware changes every few weeks,” Defense News reported. NDTV’s summit report said he compared the institutional changes he is calling for with those he helped lead during counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He described the earlier effort as “nothing compared with what needs to be done now.”
NDTV also reported Petraeus’s forecast that autonomous systems would become more numerous in late 2026 or sometime in 2027. That is his forecast, not an Army deployment schedule.
The Army’s Oct. 1 memorandum directed the establishment of the U.S. Army Futures and Autonomous Systems Command (FASCOM). The service aims to spread autonomous tools across six or more parts of its force and has set fiscal 2028 as the target for acquiring and fielding selected systems. The announcement does not set a deadline for the broader changes to organization, training and personnel that Petraeus advocates. The Army’s fiscal 2028 target is the next dated benchmark for the selected systems.
