The U.S. military is facing new threats from the proliferation of drones both domestically and abroad, and it is quickly trying to come up with defensive capabilities to stay ahead of the rapidly emerging drone technology advancements.
“There’s no one solid answer from a system standpoint that’s able to handle the spectrum of threats that are out there,” Jason Mayes, a counter-drone division operations planner for the Northern American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, said Thursday. “Just the threat picture as a whole, we’re starting to see the technology evolve at a very rapid pace.”
NORTHCOM and NORAD, tasked with defending the homeland, have been conducting a military exercise at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida over the last week and a half to test available counter-drone technology.
This experiment, known as Falcon 25.2, began on Sept. 8, and remarks from senior officials involved in it were livestreamed on Thursday. Another component of the exercise is the Defense Innovation Unit’s low-cost sensing challenge, in which 10 finalists were selected out of 118 applicants. The challenge aims to identify affordable architectures that complement higher-end systems and can be deployed around large perimeters.
The military also simulated drone attacks on a U.S. base to test how well the commercial counter-unmanned aircraft systems could intercept them.
Specific systems tested during the exercise include advanced radar systems for early detection, radio frequency and Global Navigation Satellite System jamming capabilities, directed-energy weapons, and kinetic interceptors.
One of the primary goals of the exercise is to figure out “ways to bring drones out of the sky here in the homeland and minimize that footprint of when they end up actually ending up on the ground,” Mayes added.
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War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 in late August, which followed up on his announcement in July about surging the fielding of small drones across the entire U.S. Armed Forces.
“There’s no doubt that the threats we face today from hostile drone grow by the day,” Hegseth said in his announcement about the task force. “Emerging technologies – we see it in battlefields, in far-flung places, and we see it on our own border in small unmanned aerial systems. [These drones] target and bring harm on all warfighters, our people, our bases, and frankly, the sovereignty of our national airspace.”
The threats from attack drones have completely reshaped the Russia-Ukraine war since the outset, while both Israel and its enemies have used unmanned systems against one another in the Middle East. The Houthis were also able to use cheap drones to target U.S. military personnel in the region, which the United States was forced to intercept with much more expensive and advanced equipment.
Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web attack on Russian military bases and Israel’s Operation Rising Lion attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure have shown how difficult intercepting drones can be when they’re fired from within enemy territory and near the intended targets.
Domestically, there have been no major attacks from drones, but there have been several instances of drones loitering in the sky near military bases. Drones were seen flying over Virginia’s Langley Air Base in December 2023, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio last year, and Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey, among others.
Gen. Gregory Guillot, the commander of NORTHCOM, told lawmakers in February that there were roughly 350 drone detections over military installations last year.
Counter-drone technology has to be adaptable to the environment the drone is flying in, and there are different ways to intercept them, both kinetically and not. Trying to intercept a drone in a public area domestically would have limited options due to the concern for collateral damage.
With thousands of drones used in the U.S. every day, the military and law enforcement have the difficult challenge of trying to differentiate between an armed drone on the verge of an attack and civilian-operated ones.
These incidents raised questions about who has the legal authority when it comes to identifying, tracking, and neutralizing drone threats domestically.
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“The importance of the interagency can’t be overstated because of the various jurisdictions and authorities that different organizations have when it comes to countering small UAS,” Maj. Gen. Robert Davis, the Director of Operations for NORTHCOM, said. “As an example, the military has a responsibility and authority to defend the installations out to the installation boundary, but just outside the installation boundary, it now becomes somebody else’s responsibility, whether it’s local law enforcement or FBI or even the Department of Homeland Security.”
Guillot told the senators he wants to see the authorities laid out under subsection 10 of the U.S. Code, which outlines what actions the military can take to mitigate a threat. He told senators earlier this year that he thinks the law should be extended to all military bases as opposed to the current regulations that only apply to specifically identified facilities. He also believes the law should be changed to expand the distance from a base at which the military can take action against a drone.
