The exceptional drone attack by Ukraine demands that U.S. forces prepare for similar or worse scenarios.
There are technologies that have changed warfare forever. The machine gun is one example. In World War I, the British suffered 57,000 casualties on July 1, 1916, as they fought war as in the days before the machine gun. The tank was the response to the machine gun. The Japanese showed the US Navy that yes, air power is important for naval warfare, something that the admirals had doubted. And these first-time events are not necessarily only in war. The 9/11 attacks completely changed the world of air travel, from double doors on cockpits to highly-increased and intrusive pre-flight procedures. The common thread is one side employing something new and unexpected while the other side gets drubbed because it has not anticipated the new methods.
Ukraine apparently destroyed dozens of Russian planes in a unique drone attack. They moved trucks with tens of drones into position near key Russian bases and at the anointed hour flew the drones out of the trucks and only a few miles to their parked targets. The lost bombers and AWACS planes cannot be replaced. And this is not just a Russian problem. While the U.S. is currently building the first copies of the B-21 Raider, there has been no production of B-52s, B-1s, or B-2s for decades. When one of these platforms is lost, Wikipedia can decrease the number of available units by one. There is no assembly line, so unlike the B-17s and B-29s which were replaced faster than they were being lost, when a plane is lost today, the home team has one less way to hurt its enemy.
The simplicity, ease, and low cost of the attack should be setting off red lights in defense departments all over the world. The normal behavior of the Pentagon and its peers is to do nothing until a disaster happens at home and then finally address a problem that was known years before. Initial reports said that the plan had been 18 months in the making, and that may be true. But at the end of the day, you had thousand dollar drones destroying planes that cost tens of millions to build and cannot be replaced. That is a win. For comparison, Israel has had to use millions of dollars in missiles to knock out Iranian and Yemenite projectiles. Even Iron Dome batteries fire $50,000 missiles to knock down rockets made from street signs stolen from southern Israel. A thousand dollar drone with video and complete directional control knocking out a key bomber is a grand slam in warfare.
So what should the U.S. do besides taking similar threats from China and other actors seriously? War game it. The Red Flag exercises, which are run several times each year out of Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, exist to make American and allied pilots more successful in combat. Nellis has a dedicated squadron that serves as the aggressor to the visitors and their goal is to win. Making pilots more agile and units more cohesive will help them when the bullets and missiles coming at them are not just electronic simulations on a radar screen. Nellis AFB would be the perfect place to run a simulation of the Ukrainian attack.
The base would be charged with finding the technologies to protect the very valuable assets that are often found exposed on the flight line. Virtually every type of plane can be found at Nellis during the year. The new aggressor group would use drones without explosive charges to approach and simulate an attack on the planes present. Can the U.S. field technologies to prevent the drones from reaching the planes on the base? Are there reliable systems for neutralizing drones or breaking their communications with the controllers? If a thousand dollar drone can take out a $50 million dollar bomber, then it must be taken seriously as a threat to all of the high tech toys that the U.S. armed forces use and store at bases all over the world.
Drone warfare has been revolutionary in both the Ukraine and Gaza wars. New capabilities and types of drones have allowed high-quality surveillance as well as suicide attacks on targets when identified. Loitering, interaction with other platforms, and an ability to avoid detection allow for possibilities that are far cheaper than very expensive manned aircraft or helicopters. The key features of the Ukrainian operation involve the logistics of moving the drones across Russia, keeping them charged in place and then sending them off to their targets with complete control from a distant location. The Russians had at best a few minutes to realize what was happening and possibly respond.
We used to sit for hours outside of Nellis to watch everything, including F-22s, F-35s and an occasional A-10. The time of flight from our vantage point to the hangars would also be around three to four minutes. The U.S. has hundreds of bases throughout the country and world. There are access roads or forests near all of them. How do you protect very expensive assets from a copycat attack? How do you prevent the drones from reaching their targets and doing billions of dollars of damage in a few minutes? This is not a trivial challenge. Israel has been relatively successful in downing drones from Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen. But the success has not been 100 percent and there have been casualties and destruction of property. Can drone defense quickly get up to the speed needed to prevent a repeat Spider Web attack against U.S. interests? While the U.S. has lost nearly a dozen Reaper drones at a cost of over $30 million a piece in Yemen, the Ukrainians are using drones that cost a few thousand dollars at most. Who cares if only 10 percent reach a high-value target? America’s enemies will send hundreds of them to take out bombers, fighters, naval targets and more. Ukraine made 2 million drones last year and is looking to make 4 million this year.
Israel and the U.S. have underground pens for planes as well as reinforced concrete hangars that may be open front and back. There is nowhere to hide naval assets, though Israel has a huge structure in Haifa for its Dolphin submarines. Can the Pentagon put together a counter-drone program that could deal with an attack similar to the one pulled off by Ukraine last week? Multibillion dollar submarines and aircraft carriers are exposed when in port. Can they be protected from a swarm of suicide explosive drones? The U.S. should find a solution before someone tries to copy Ukraine’s bold attack.