Army specialist warns Pentagon  basic safeguards 'are being ignored': memo

Editor's Note: This headline was updated for clarity.
The U.S. military is racing to catch up with other nations that have realized the importance of cheap, expendable drones in modern warfare, but in its hurry to innovate, an Army explosives safety specialist has warned that the Defense Department may be ignoring basic explosive safeguards, resulting in “greater risk” of accidents.

According to a memo obtained by CBS News, at least one mini-drone has already detonated, injuring an Army Special Forces officer.

The memo — written by a U.S. Army staff member with more than 20 years of experience in uniform and as a civilian employee evaluating and monitoring safety experience in the service — warned that the “drive to counter unmanned aerial threats has imposed pressures that could undermine long-established safety standards.”

"We fully understand [Special Forces]'s ability to innovate and create tactical solutions to accomplish a mission set [or] task," the memo states, but it goes on to say that the safety specialist believes that the Defense Department "is in such a rush to solve future and enduring threats related to [unmanned aerial systems]" that "basic explosive safety principles are being ignored," and "will ultimately lead to a greater risk associated with mishaps [or] accidents."

While the U.S. military has used drones for decades, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, these have relied on complex, costly designs. The war between Russia and Ukraine, and now the U.S. and Iran, however, has proven the value of low-cost, easily produced drones.

“Earlier this year,” explained CBS, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth created Joint Interagency Task Force 401 to help accelerate the Pentagon's drone production capabilities. Late last year, the Pentagon requested information from the defense industry to gauge its ‘willingness and ability’ to make roughly 300,000 drones, following President Trump's executive order calling for more unmanned aircraft systems to be produced.”

The memo warning of safety concerns was first distributed in March and was written by an explosive safety specialist from the command safety office at Fort Polk in Louisiana, where the Army's Joint Readiness Training Center is located. It was initially sent to the director of safety at U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. It detailed an incident in which an explosive device attached to a drone detonated inside a building, injuring a soldier with “lacerations to the arm and face and a concussion,” who has since returned to duty.

A spokesperson for the center noted that “it did not receive a request to investigate the incident, explaining that for an incident to be investigated by Army center, it must ‘meet the threshold in regard to a dollar value of damages to equipment and/or a permanent injury or death.’”

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