Recent incidents involving small, hostile unmanned aerial vehicles in Iraq underscore the need for the United States to rapidly field defenses against this “emerging danger,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said Oct. 24.
On Oct. 2, an Islamic State UAV armed with explosives killed two Kurdish fighters and wounded two French commandos in northern Iraq. And last week, two Air Force intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance aircraft flying in support of coalition ground forces used “electronic warfare capabilities” to down an Islamic State drone “in less than 15 minutes” near Mosul, according to an Air Force spokeswoman. 
“It’s a problem and it’s an example of something we have to attack quickly,” James said at a Washington, D.C., event hosted by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “You don’t necessarily have to shoot. There’s a variety of ways to attack the problem. And what we need to do is put our best thinking together and focus on it going forward in the future.”
The U.S. military’s latest annual Black Dart counter-UAV exercise, held in September at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, focused on jamming and other non-kinetic, non-destructive ways to bring down UAVs.
James asserted that adapting existing technology may offer significant protection against drones.
“It’s not necessarily the development of a new thing to defeat it,” she told the CNAS audience. “It could be taking what we’ve got already and packaging it in a different way to go after that threat.”
Army Secretary Eric Fanning and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus echoed her concern about small UAVs. Fanning said that countering hostile drones will be among the top priorities for his service’s new Rapid Capabilities Office. The office aims to leapfrog bureaucratic barriers to speed the fielding of new technologies.
“Rather than getting the pristine solution, the 100 percent solution out into the field, it’s getting something into the hands of troops that they can use, experiment with and refine in real time, because that’s what the adversary is doing,” Fanning said of the office.
Mabus suggested that laser weapons could play a role in defeating UAVs. Aboard the USS Ponce, the Navy has been testing the 30-kilowatt Laser Weapon System (LaWS) against drones and other targets. “We’re using it now to develop follow-on weapons,” he said.
With a new president slated to take off in January, the UAV challenge could get a fresh look, especially if the next administration follows past practice and conducts a strategic review of threats, James said. CNAS chief executive officer Michèle Flournoy, who is considered a leading contender to be Hillary Clinton’s defense secretary, introduced the service secretaries at the start of her think-tank’s event but did not join the discussion.