A new joint interagency task force in the military that is designed to lead the department’s counter-drone technology is hoping to change how the War Department thinks about autonomous systems.
“One of our goals is to change the way that the department thinks about counter small UAS, that’s a big ask,” Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401, said on Tuesday at the Association of the United States Army’s exposition and conference. “We’ve been established for about six weeks. We’ve got a lot accomplished. So far. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Drone technology and counter-drone defense have become a primary area of development for militaries worldwide, and their effectiveness has been on display in conflicts this decade, primarily in the Middle East and in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The development of how drones are used and the threats they now pose are drastically different from the perception of these threats prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. During a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned of the destructive nature of drone warfare. A few weeks later, Russia launched an attack using over 500 drones that killed at least five people.
Drones vary in cost but are largely several times cheaper than the more expensive equipment the military has used, which is ill-suited to stop incoming drones. Ross said the military should view attritable systems as “expandable,” and that “we should be procuring them at a price point that ensures they’re expendable, and we should train with them as if they’re expendable, or we’ll never have the proficiency we need to use them effectively.”
He also said there is no drone that will be a “silver bullet” to solve all offensive and defensive needs and likened what he thinks the military’s drone arsenal is to a set of golf clubs that have different uses.
Earlier this week, the 101st Airborne Division unveiled its new “Attritable Battlefield Enabler 1.01,” a cheap, small drone designed for small-unit-level operations. The drone costs $750, and all the parts are made domestically, except the microchip, which comes from Taiwan.
It can be assembled in as little as 20 minutes, and when it’s operational, it can carry both lethal and nonlethal payloads.
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There’s also a new Army pilot program that corresponds to legislation not yet passed to have the Pentagon establish government-owned drone innovation and production facilities.
Gen. James Mingus, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said on Tuesday that once the first facility is up, it will likely be able to make 10,000 drones “a month by this time next year, if not more.”
War Secretary Pete Hegseth issued the “unleashing U.S. military drone dominance” directive in July, which calls for every Army squad to field low-cost attritable drones by the end of next year. A month later, he set up Joint Interagency Task Force 401 to work on the counter-drone defense side of the equation.
