On a patch of dirt in the vast wilderness in Alaska, a long-range drone roared like a lawn mower as it shot into the sky. It scanned the ground for a target it had been programmed to recognize, and then dived, attempting to destroy it by crashing into it. But it missed, landing about 80 feet away.

On another attempt, a drone nose-dived at launch. On a subsequent try, a drone crashed into a mountain.

These drones weren’t flown by amateur hobbyists. They were launched by drone manufacturers paid by a special unit of the Department of Defense as part of an urgent effort to update U.S. capabilities. For four days last month, they tested prototypes of one-way drones by trying to crash them into programmed targets, while soldiers tried to stop the drones with special electronic equipment.

The exercise aimed to help U.S. defense contractors and soldiers get better at drone warfare. But it illustrated some of the ways in which the U.S. military could be unprepared for such a conflict. The nation lags behind Russia and China in manufacturing drones, training soldiers to use them and defending against them, according to interviews with more than a dozen U.S. military officials and drone industry experts.

“We all know the same thing. We aren’t giving the American war fighter what they need to survive warfare today,” said Trent Emeneker, project manager of the Autonomy Portfolio at the military’s Defense Innovation Unit, which organized the exercise in Alaska and paid for the development of the drone prototypes that flew there. “If we had to go to war tomorrow, do we have what we need? No. What we are trying to do is fix that.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has acknowledged that the country has fallen behind, and he announced a series of new policies and investments in drones that he vowed would close the gap. In a video released on Thursday, he cited outdated rules and procurement processes as making it too difficult for commanding officers to buy drones and train their soldiers to use them.