Ukraine has become a proving ground for many of the tactics, techniques, and technologies that will transform that next era of warfare. One recent development foreshadows a novel, potentially strategic threat against the U.S. homeland.
CNN reported last week that pro-Ukraine partisan forces have conducted drone strikes, covertly launched from within Russian territory, against targets of both material and symbolic importance — including the Kremlin, a neighborhood in Moscow, and an oil refinery. While those strikes have, for the most part, caused limited damage, their psychological impact has been more significant, undercutting the myth of Russia’s military superiority, as well as the overall rationale of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s so-called special military operation.
No doubt America’s contemporary adversaries are taking note and imagining how their own covert teams — equipped with small, armed drones — might carry out a nationwide surprise attack against the American homeland. It’s not hard to imagine Chinese agents infiltrating U.S. territory, buying some quadcopter drones from Best Buy, and then arming them with homemade explosives. These operatives would be ready at a moment’s notice to launch a nationwide wave of attacks against American powerplants and airports.
Even if they are armed with relatively weak munitions, small drones offer America’s adversaries a low-cost, plausibly deniable way to spread panic and paralyze our economy. The drone incursions at London’s Gatwick Airport in December 2018 highlighted that threat. By simply flying drones within the airport’s vicinity, the unidentified perpetrators were able to ground traffic and strand more than 100,000 travelers for three days. A similar incident could easily happen in America — and just imagine the propaganda impact of a cheap, armed drone destroying a multi-million-dollar American warplane parked on the tarmac at some Air Force base.
Such a scenario is not far-fetched. Last December, remember, two Ukrainian drone attacks against Russia’s Engels Airbase killed multiple Russian servicemen and damaged at least two bombers. According to news reports, a Ukrainian military reconnaissance unit coordinated those strikes from within Russian territory.
Russia’s air defenses have performed poorly against attacks by Ukraine's small- and medium-sized drones, and the drone attack against the Kremlin last month was particularly embarrassing. Yet, one wonders if America’s domestic air defense network would fare much better against a massive drone attack. Such low-flying, bird-sized targets pose a challenge to air defense systems designed to shoot down missiles and warplanes — especially when they’re launched in swarms. Moreover, a skilled drone pilot can use buildings and foliage to conceal his vehicle’s approach path. Thus, the most effective counter-drone defenses may be ones with narrower fields of view, specially tailored to detect slow, low-altitude threats, and co-located on the sites they are meant to defend. Along that line of thinking, it may be up to the Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement agencies across America to provide the first line of defense against drone attacks by a peer adversary such as China or Russia.
In 2018, Congress granted the Department of Homeland Security the authority to destroy drones that pose “a credible threat to public safety or national security.” That law — the Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018 — was tailored toward drone threats from terrorist groups, such as Islamic State and al Qaeda. It also limited DHS agencies to counter-drone missions at selected high-risk sites, events, and assets. According to the legislation, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies must request DHS support to provide counter-drone defenses at mass gatherings or important events.
Those provisions left a lot of America without 24/7 counter-drone defenses — a loophole that any peer adversary is likely to exploit during wartime. Further complicating matters, the 2018 bill came with a five-year sunset provision and is set to expire this September.
The Preventing Emerging Threats Act needs to be renewed and updated to reflect the fact that small- and medium-sized drone attacks are now a staple of conventional, state-on-state combat — a new reality that threatens the American homeland, as well as our military units on the battlefield.
“This problem set straddles both conventional and unconventional warfare,” Stephen Townsend, a retired Army general who commanded the multinational task force against Islamic State from 2016 to 2017, recently told me about the current state of drone warfare.
“Ukraine is this perfect example of what’s going to happen with us,” Townsend said. “High-end drone capabilities will be part of any enemy’s air campaign against us. We haven’t had to deal with that spectrum of threats yet, and I’m not sure we’re moving as fast as we can. That’s the bottom line.”
With an eye toward improving its counter-drone defenses, the Department of Defense established the Joint Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office in 2019. Even so, the Pentagon is still not working fast enough to develop workable and cost-effective defense systems against small and medium-sized armed drones. To meet that need, the American private sector has stepped up, and a handful of start-ups have already developed innovative counter-drone interception systems that minimize the risk of collateral damage on the ground.
The technology exists to protect America from these novel threats from the sky, but it’s up to lawmakers to invest in nationwide counter-drone defenses before the next war comes.
Nolan Peterson is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an independent defense consultant based in Kyiv and Washington. A former U.S. Air Force Special Operations pilot and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Peterson has more than nine years of experience reporting from Ukraine's front lines.
