Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Federal Protective Service (FPS) are each preparing to conduct evaluations of technologies for mitigating threats from small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) as part of ongoing efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to adopt capabilities across the spectrum of drone security measures, a department official supporting the two agencies said this week.
CBP and FPS have been going through the legal and privacy requirements to get their respective efforts to be able to actually conduct evaluations of counter UAS technology and are nearing the “end zone,” Shawn McDonald, CUAS program manager for the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, told Defense Daily in an interview on Aug. 4. McDonald’s team has been helping both agencies prepare for the evaluations and is purchasing the systems that will be tested.
In late July, DHS published a new privacy impact assessment (PIA) for C-UAS that includes two appendices, one for CBP and the other for FPS.
The document says that that CBP’s forthcoming technology demonstration, which will be done by the Border Patrol, will help the agency better understand the threat along the border, gather information on operational requirements, training needs and capability gaps, and identify available capabilities and solutions. It also says that agents will get the opportunity to train with systems in operational environments.
“Due to technological advances and improved costs, Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) are increasingly using UAS to smuggle contraband into the United States,” the privacy assessment says. “The ability for TCOs to use UAS to smuggle narcotics, contraband, and surveil law enforcement operations has empowered TCOs and made it easier for them to evade law enforcement.”
The FPS, which protects government critical infrastructure, will evaluate CUAS at or near federal facilities. As with CBP, the testing will help the agency better understand threats of UAS to federal buildings and personnel, develop requirements and understand capability gaps, and sort out available solutions.
For both CBP and FPS, the PIA says that, if possible, agents will attempt to mitigate a drone threat by identifying and approaching the operator of a UAS to discuss the threat. If a threat can’t be resolved through discussion, the agencies may use the CUAS technology to disrupt or disable the drone.
McDonald said identifying the ground controller and sending someone to get an individual to discontinue flying a drone in a certain area is the “best mitigation technique” because the operator is typically either “either careless or clueless.” Most of the time, drones are being used to get better pictures or video, he said.
McDonald manages one-half of S&T’s drone security efforts with his part focused on how to defeat small UAS for homeland applications. The other half is an air domain awareness initiative that is examining how to detect, track and identify small drones and other aircraft, also for homeland uses.
The detect, track, identification and mitigation components go hand-in-hand but the mitigation piece was given to McDonald in May 2019 to make it easier to manage the overall effort, he said.
CBP and FPS are two of the four DHS components that were given explicit authority by Congress in 2018 to be able to defeat threats from small drones around certain assets and events. The Coast Guard and Secret Service are the other two organizations and both have operated with systems for detecting, tracking, identifying and mitigating drone threats.
Two previous deployments of CUAS systems include the 2019 Super Bowl in Atlanta in February and the United Nations General Assembly in New York that September. McDonald also said there have been other opportunities to obtain data about the technologies but he couldn’t disclose these.
In addition to actual deployments, McDonald said Sandia National Laboratories is helping S&T with testing of CUAS technologies that emit radio frequency signals to make sure that they don’t overlap with frequency bands used by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to manage the national airspace. This testing essentially lets the government know if the technology is safe to deploy, McDonald said.
The testing by Sandia is done in an anechoic chamber, McDonald said, and has been useful not only in helping to determine if some systems won’t interfere with FAA systems but also in providing feedback to vendors who didn’t realize their technology might interfere with certain frequency bands. It’s usually an easy fix for vendors and they are happy to oblige, he said.
Most of the CUAS systems developed in the U.S. have been designed with overseas markets in mind, he said, adding that airspace issues in the U.S. can vary from elsewhere. The good news is that in most cases, the equipment is limited in range and is designed for working out in single kilometers not tens of kilometers, he said.
DHS S&T will purchase existing commercial and government-off-the-shelf equipment for the evaluations and won’t be developing technology, McDonald said.
So far, S&T has tested about six systems and handed them off to components to evaluate, he said.
McDonald is also working with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on an upcoming evaluation of drone security technology at Miami International Airport. TSA doesn’t have authority to conduct mitigation and McDonald said that for now the focus will be on detecting, tracking and identifying UAS.
The CBP, FPS and TSA efforts have all incurred delays due the COVID-19 pandemic.
The limited homeland deployments to date of counter-drone systems have provided some initial lessons related to the suite of drone security needs.
One is that finding the operator of a UAS and sending someone to discuss with them the problem is an effective mitigation technique, McDonald said. It also points to the need for more “operator education” about where drones can be flown, he said.
A second lesson is the need for CUAS systems and technologies to be interoperable. There is no “silver bullet” and “no clear leader” in terms of equipment for countering UAS so a “system of systems approach” is what works best, McDonald said. No company has a complete solution that is best for the customer, he said.
Right now, the best solutions involve bringing together sensors from different vendors so common interfaces are important to make integration easier, McDonald said.
Another lesson has been that vendors don’t know what the government’s requirements are, McDonald said. This has been shown through the Sandia testing on whether systems interfere with FAA bands, he said.
A market survey of CUAS published by Sandia in March 2019 highlights that companies want to know what the government’s requirements are.
“A common response when communicating with manufacturers about their product was ‘what are your requirements?’” the market survey says. “Many manufacturers want to know the government’s requirements and applications, so they can tailor their product to meet more specific needs. Many manufacturers offer their core CUAS technology in multiple platforms and form factors for this very reason.”
The CUAS effort in the U.S. was jump started primarily by incidents in December 2018 of drones flying around Gatwick airport in London that disrupted and delayed flights. A similar incident occurred at Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey early in 2019.