The mission is urgent for the Pentagon and its defense industry partners: Build cost-effective tools, lots of them, to counter the increasingly cheap and lethal tactical attack drones wielded by U.S. adversaries abroad or terrorists targeting events at home.
The race to develop and field counter-drone technology is one of the central themes this week at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference in downtown Washington. The sprawling convention floor is packed with displays of such capabilities, including electronic warfare, signal jammers, and drone-catching nets that can pluck an enemy unmanned aerial system out of the sky.
One of the key points stressed by officials across the military and defense industry is that the problem will require a host of solutions.
“The wide breadth of this threat requires a no one-size-fits-all approach,” Maj. Gen. David Stewart, director for fires at the headquarters of the Department of the Army, said during a panel discussion at the AUSA conference.
Those counter-drone tools aren’t just necessary on battlefields around the world. They are also crucial for U.S. law enforcement at home.
In December, the sighting of mystery drones over several areas of the East Coast triggered global headlines and widespread national security unease.
During the months since, key lawmakers have sounded the alarm about the threat that small drones could pose to the Super Bowl, the 2026 World Cup, the 2028 Summer Olympics, and other major gatherings on American soil, including political rallies.
Unique challenges are tied to countering the threat. One complication is ensuring no collateral damage on the ground if drones need to be taken down near large crowds.
“What we’re trying to do, at least in the homeland, is identify capabilities that if I shoot a drone down or bring a drone down, it doesn’t cause collateral effects on the ground and harm innocent bystanders,” said Col. Marc Pelini, director of the Air and Missile Defense Cross-Functional Team at the Army’s Transformation and Training Command.
“What we’re trying to do is identify the best of breed capabilities to address the full spectrum of threats,” Col. Pelini said during an AUSA panel discussion Monday on counter-drone capabilities.
The expansion of the counter-drone industry in many ways represents the flip side of the explosion of commercial and military drone proliferation in recent years.
The small unmanned aircraft, often outfitted in makeshift ways with explosives, have had a central role in the Russia-Ukraine war. Defense industry insiders say the pressure to develop new tools to counter those drones is immense.
Special emphasis is being placed on finding cost-effective solutions for more sophisticated swarms of drones.
“Drones are very much a part of warfare today. But it’s not just warfare,” said Tom Konicki, director of business development for defense and space at Honeywell Aerospace Technologies. “The threat is real and the threat is now. And it’s just going to get worse.”
“Everybody is having this problem,” Mr. Konicki told The Washington Times’ Threat Status in an exclusive interview on the AUSA conference exhibition floor. “It’s a galvanizing threat that I don’t remember in my lifetime, affecting everybody from law enforcement, airports, military — everybody is affected by this.”
Honeywell at the AUSA convention is displaying its Stationary and Mobile UAS Reveal and Intercept, or SAMURAI, which can be outfitted on a truck or other platform. The layered system includes radars and cameras to track as many as 400 incoming drones.
The system can use electronic warfare to jam drones or scramble their communications. If that doesn’t work, the system can deploy a “drone capture drone” capability, using a friendly drone to fire a net and capture the enemy craft. That approach could prove highly effective if attack drones operate in a crowded space such as a major sporting event.
Lawmakers have expressed interest in ensuring such capabilities are in place before major events, such as the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“The thing that keeps coming up in our discussions that keeps you up at night, that I think is going to be the biggest threat and emerging threat that we have to be ready for, are these drones, these unmanned aerial vehicles, that could cross over into a stadium with an explosive device. And our ability to take that out is very limited right now,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican and chair of the House task force on enhancing security for special events.
Mr. McCaul made the comments in an exclusive interview on the Threat Status weekly podcast earlier this year.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, is making a major effort to build drones in large numbers. That buildup reflects the growing consensus inside the defense industry that drones are becoming common tools of modern warfare used routinely at the tactical level.
Some defense sector sources have told Threat Status that small drones, in particular, are becoming like ammunition: basic, attritable warfighting equipment that virtually every soldier will soon have in their personal tool kit.
Service members at that tactical level will also need to be able to take out an enemy’s drones, and, in some cases, they won’t be able to rely on the large-scale solutions of the past.
The kinds of tactical drones, many costing a few thousand dollars or even less, that have been used to great effect in the Russia-Ukraine war or even by terrorist outfits such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels are nearly impossible to combat with large, expensive ground-based missiles.
Furthermore, industry sources say the cost-benefit analysis of using a million-dollar missile to shoot down a cheap drone is no longer practical.
It is also not practical to shoot them down using traditional manned aircraft, especially in the coming age of drone swarms, which could include dozens or even hundreds of small craft acting in unison.
Those realities have sparked the race for more counter-drone tools.
The private international defense firm Israel Weapons Industries, for example, offers the ARBEL, a computerized fire control system built to dramatically improve the accuracy and lethality of standard AR-15 rifles when used against drones.
When connected to the rifle, the ARBEL system continuously analyzes the shooter’s micro-movements. It automatically times the release of rounds, firing only when a shot is calculated to do the most damage to a drone.
Honeywell is also working on projects to provide components for laser weapons systems that could be used to take out enemy drones. Such lasers, or directed energy weapons, have moved out of the science fiction realm and soon could be part of a regular anti-drone tool kit for the U.S. and its allies.
• John T. Seward can be reached at jseward@washingtontimes.com.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.