Washington Post: “With so much attention being devoted to commercial drones these days, it’s easy to forget that the military’s long-term strategy for unmanned systems is still a work in progress. A lot of the funding for drone operations comes from the special budget for the war in Afghanistan — and as the drawdown begins, that money is going to dry up.”

“That’s a big problem for the military. It now has to transform what was originally a stopgap solution into a sustainable function of the armed services. That process is also going to grant drones a more important place in combat, according to the latest revision to a 25-year roadmap the Pentagon released this week. Depending on the kind of drone we’re talking about — unmanned aerial systems (UAS), unmanned ground systems (UGS) or unmanned maritime systems (UMS) — the Pentagon foresees an array of different problems that all need to be tackled over the next quarter century.”