The Army announced that some of the top candidates to counter a battlefield threat U.S. Central Command Gen. Frank McKenzie described as a “new component of warfare” could be bought at Costco and weaponized.
McKenzie warned Thursday about drones such as those used by the Islamic State against the American military in Syria and Iraq.
“A four-quad rotorcraft or something like that, they could be launched and flown, and with very simple modifications, it could be made into something that can drop a weapon,” McKenzie said at a June 10 discussion.
The increased reporting of drones near bases and in cities led each of the services to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to pursue their own solutions, ranging from electronic jamming to shooting them down.
Last year, Defense Secretary Mark Esper ordered a joint office to review the threat and put Army Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey in charge of finding the “best in breed” solution.
“Each service was doing it in silos, and they were sending a lot of prototype systems to the war fighter,” Gainey told the Washington Examiner ahead of the announcement.
“What we found is the best way to do this is through a systems-of-systems approach,” he said.
By “system of systems,” Gainey said that the joint office found that a multifaceted option that included radar, electronic warfare, and a kinetic option on one command-and-control interface was the most efficient and removed duplication.
“It’s integrated into a common [command and control] where you’re looking at one interface to be able to control all of the systems in a common operating picture, as opposed to systems being employed singlely,” he said.
Gainey’s Joint Counter Small Unmanned Aerial Systems office has 65 personnel from across the services. Thursday’s first public step broke down some of its initial findings, naming the best solutions in four categories: fixed/semi-fixed, mounted/mobile, dismounted/handheld, and command and control.
“There is existing technology out there, and we are improving on it,” he said.
One handheld device developed by Flex Force is a radio-frequency jammer that looks something like a speed gun to clock the velocity of a pitcher’s fastball.
The Ultra Electronics’ Air Defense System Integrator is a software solution that integrates a variety of technologies into one command-and-control interface, as Gainey described.
Naming the best in breed is a first step, the general said, as the Pentagon gets its head wrapped around a problem that is constantly evolving for the commercial and hobby sector.
“As this technology rapidly evolves, the key will be how do you keep up with the technology of the threat,” Gainey said.
Deciding which solutions to invest in and recommend for war fighters was a first step.
“Right now, our efforts are getting those best systems to all of our war fighters out there,” he said.
Reports indicate that across the military, services have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on counter-UAS technology and research and development.
“Most of that capability is already available,” Gainey added. “It’s just a matter of continuing to build the capacity globally.”
Right now, he said there was a heavy stress on electronic warfare, but the department wants to make sure as drone technology improves, the cost of counter-drone solutions is kept in check.
“As future technology is developed, we want to be on the right side of the cost curve on this,” Gainey said. “The capability that can be employed are things like directed energy, lasers, things like that in the future.”
The quickly stood up joint office leverages the budgets of all the services for its research. In the future, it will have its own budget, Gainey said, but he could not define what that budget might be.
In the coming weeks and months, Gainey’s Cs-UAS office will release a blueprint for how to move forward with development and a counter-UAS strategy.
“This is a threat that’s really a global threat, not just the CENTCOM [area of responsibility],” he said. “There are hobbyists out there flying UASs, and how do you manage that from a counter-UAS perspective?”
