Could it really be only three years since I wrote my first post about upcoming fears of drone warfare? Since that article things have moved forward rapidly, driven particularly by the Russia-Ukraine war, where drones have become part of the battlefield, and also because of non-combat factor of accounting costs when it’s a $10,000 drone killing a $4 million tank.
You would think that in the face of all this the US military would be ready for the future, and while they’ve set up a new anti-drone school, and the US Army has finally got a laser counter-drone system (EAGLS), the following is another reality of drone warfare they’re clearly not prepared for, the non-war situation:
For seventeen consecutive days in December 2023, highly sensitive US military bases in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia were the target of a drone swarm of unknown origin, type, or purpose. The official response seems to be one of studied indifference.
Just for context, the Shahed 131/136 drone used by the Russians in Ukraine to attack Ukrainian cities and infrastructure is 11 feet long and has a maximum speed of 115mph. It carried a 110-pound warhead. The drones spotted at Langley are roughly twice as long. Every $350 million F-22 you see parked there could be hit by a rather cheap drone before the airbase had time to decide they were an “imminent threat” and react.
If you think those are harsh comments, understand that it comes from a recently retired US Army officer, and then read this from the WSJ:
U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly wasn’t sure what to make of reports that a suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft had been flying over Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline.
…
The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.
The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port.
So this has been going on for a while and officials didn’t know if the drone fleet, belonged to clever hobbyists or hostile forces, although the idea that a bunch of rogue hobbyists dropped a few million dollars to develop a massive drone fleet to fly over US military installations strains credulity.
U.S. officials didn’t believe hobbyists were flying the drones, given the complexity of the operation. The drones flew in a pattern: one or two fixed-wing drones positioned more than 100 feet in the air and smaller quadcopters, the size of 20-pound commercial drones, often below and flying slower. Occasionally, they hovered.
Well DUH! Recently they’ve found more clues when a student from the University of Minnesota, one Fengyun Shi, was seen parked outside a shipyard where nuclear submarines were being built as well as the Navy’s newest generation of the Ford Class aircraft carrier, then asked for help from nearby residents because his drone had gotten stuck in a tree, then scarpered for Oakland California, first via train and then plane. By then his drone had fallen out of the tree and been examined; the photos and video it contained finally triggered official action:
On Jan. 18, federal agents arrested Shi as he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket. Shi told FBI agents he was a ship enthusiast and hadn’t realized his drone crossed into restricted airspace. Investigators weren’t convinced but found no evidence linking him to the Chinese government. They learned he had bought the drone on sale at a Costco in San Francisco the day before he traveled to Norfolk.
U.S. prosecutors charged Shi with unlawfully taking photos of classified naval installations, the first case involving a drone under a provision of U.S. espionage law. The 26-year-old Chinese national pleaded guilty and appeared in federal court in Norfolk on Oct. 2 for sentencing.
The judge didn’t believe his bullshit either but given the size of those drone fleets there must be other Chinese citizens doing the same shit. And this has been going on for a while:
Drone incursions into restricted airspace were already worrying national-security officials. Two months earlier, in October 2023, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear-weapons experiments. The Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site outside Las Vegas detected four of the drones over three days. Employees spotted a fifth.
As for the defences, well…. The local police tried to be helpful. Hampton, VA police chased the drones on foot and by patrol car. One of the droners was seen landing near Gosnold’s Hope Park. Three other drones were also believed to have landed there.
But as has so often been the case with the US military in recent decades, what point is there in having cool laser defense systems manned by operators trained in anti-drone operations when you have Rules Of Engagement like these:
Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn’t qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway.
At a minimum all that’s required here is a public redefinition of what is an “imminent threat” and a public warning to the effect that, innocent or not, your little drone will be shot down if it strays near, let alone over, a military base.
Meantime this article contrasts the difference between the recent “Grim Beeper” operation by the IDF and Mossad to what would have happened inside the US defence-Intelligence complex should a similar plan have been suggested:
Immediately lawyers would weigh in, conjuring low-probability, worst-case scenarios the way lawyers do. Layer upon layer of bureaucracy would then join the process: the Justice Department, various law of war experts, and possibly some members of Congress. Before anything got done, the whole project would be shelved.
Many instances of this kind of bureaucratic sclerosis appeared during the War on Terror. Instead of providing broad guidance about proportionality and other humanitarian considerations, lawyers were apparently placed in tactical operations centers, acting like commissars, approving or vetoing a commander’s particular targeting decisions.
Perhaps it’s just the inevitable difference arising between a military that’s largely at peace (even the so-called War On Terror paled in comparison to past US war efforts in scale) and one that is constantly at war, starting with the Israeli’s ability to innovate: Rafael expects Iron Beam laser to be active in 2025
But in focusing on the big brigades like the B-21, $13 billion aircraft carriers and laser systems the US appears to be leaving itself wide open to a Pearl Harbour attack via small-scale, off-the-shelf drones equipped with little more than a grenade. Losing a $4 million tank to such a thing is bad enough: losing a $350 million F-22 is literally in a different league.
No Minister 
Yip – its getting real. Its a bit like battleships being endangered by the original small torpedo boats, the cost and time to build differential between the two classes makes it unnerving for the big boys.
These drones being targeted by lasers seems over kill. Surely buckshot sorts the mofo’s out. Its how you take out ducks and geese afterall
Three new counter drone systems are being rolled out by the US Army for the land domain. There are already good systems in place in the Air and maritime domains.
The objective is to jam the communications through electronic and cyber attack between drones and their operators causing them to either return home or crash.
Lockheed Martin’s Function Electronic Warfare-Air (Large) pods mounted on a MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAV.
Lockheed’s Terrestrial Layer System which will be Stryker IFV mounted capability enabling the first integrated electronic warfare, signals intelligence and cyber platform.
Mastodon’s TLS-Manpack the first dismounted electronic attack capability that individual soldiers can use to conduct electronic jamming on the move.
These soft-kill non-kinetic systems will become more prevalent in the years ahead and will be present in the land, maritime and air domains.
The question that concerns me is will C-UAS be a factor in our upcoming Defence Capability Plan across the Land, Maritime and Air Domains.
It’s not the systems that worry me so much as the ROE’s. What do you make of these reports about the US just watching these things overfly their bases?
That is the beauty of non lethal active protection systems like the use of area of effect electronic jamming and other soft-kill or decoy systems.
They don’t physically “shoot” anything down with respect to ROE and incur the guidelines of Armed Conflict and Humanitarian Lawyers with the subsequent confusion down the chain of command. Just jam or fry the electronics of the platform on the receiving end.
The overflight of civilian micro surveillance drones over US Department Defense installations is probably something that has outpaced the ability of the Pentagon to respond through bureaucratic complacency.
The solution is to have a uniform prohibition of flying over military bases and military industrial facilities in law just like they have at intelligence community locations like Langley, Fort Meade and other highest designation national security locations have already.
The other thing about drones (as we have seen in Ukraine) is that they have become a cottage industry. Smaller scale ones are easy to setup and incredibly effective.