Pentagon Adopts New Strategy to Counter Drones

The Pentagon is seen from the air in Washington on March 3, 2022. Joshua Roberts/Reuters

The Pentagon is adopting a new strategy for countering the threat posed by drones following a series of high-profile encounters at bases throughout the world.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin signed the new, classified Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems on Dec. 2.

“In recent years, adversary unmanned systems have evolved rapidly,” Austin said in a prepared statement. “These cheap systems are increasingly changing the battlefield, threatening U.S. installations, and wounding or killing our troops.”

Austin described the strategy as “a roadmap for countering the threat of adversary unmanned systems.” As such, it aims to unify the approach the Department of Defense (DOD) takes to countering unmanned systems across all domains and regardless of the type of drone.

By producing a singular strategy for countering unmanned systems, the DOD hopes to orient itself around a common understanding and approach to the issue of drones, which have security implications for civilian and military contexts alike.

The use of commercial drones as a tool for espionage and harassment has become a major issue in recent years, with unidentified drones approaching naval vessels and military bases throughout the world.

Just last month, several drones were spotted flying over four military bases in England. Among the sites targeted was Royal Air Force Lakenheath, which serves as the U.S. Air Forces in Europe’s only fighter wing of the fifth generation F-35 aircraft.

Concerning more overt military competition, other major powers worldwide are also investing huge sums in large, state-of-the-art drone systems.

Communist China is foremost in its efforts to deploy unmanned systems en masse. For more than a decade, it has invested heavily in everything from cheap and expendable commercial quadcopters to resource-heavy high-altitude long-endurance drones.

Of note, China’s third and newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, is expected to host a variety of drones. Likewise, the 290-foot ocean research vessel Zhu Hai Yun is capable of deploying various underwater and airborne drones. The ship itself is also a drone and can either be remotely controlled by a pilot or left to navigate the open seas autonomously.

Although Beijing has officially described the Zhu Hai Yun as a maritime research tool, a South China Morning Post report stated that the vessel was equipped with military capabilities that can “intercept, besiege, and expel invasive targets.”

The DOD has since announced its own initiative, Replicator, to manufacture and deploy thousands of unmanned and autonomous systems to counter China.

According to a DOD fact sheet released this week, the new drone strategy builds on Replicator and some other major DOD initiatives.

In all, the new strategy aims to enable the military to “detect, track, and characterize” drone threats in real time and incorporate unmanned systems as a key component in the DOD’s thinking about warfare more broadly, according to the fact sheet.

To that end, the strategy appears to build upon the vision first described last year by then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who said that he anticipated that the bulk of U.S. forces would be robotic within the next decade.

“We’re at a pivotal moment in history from a military standpoint,“ Milley said at the time. ”We’re at what amounts to a fundamental change in the very character of war.

“That’s coming. Those changes, that technology ... we are looking at inside of 10 years.”