Disrupting supply chains for drones made by U.S. adversaries will be an important undertaking for the Pentagon to ensure U.S. air superiority in future conflicts, U.S. Special Operations Commander Army Gen. Richard Clarke suggested last week.
“I’ve been in the Army for 38 years, and my entire time in the Army on battlefields in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, I never had to look up,” he told an Aspen Security Forum discussion on July 22. “I never had to look up because the U.S. always maintained air superiority, and our forces were protected because we had air cover. But now with everything from very small quadcopters up to very large unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs], we won’t always have that luxury.”
Clarke, who graduated the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1984, is to retire this summer.
“Much of our focus is about the defeat of the UAVs after they’ve already launched, but I think there are opportunities for our government, for our intel agencies, and our Department of Defense on how do we stop those drones before they even launch and what are those supply chains and what are the norms of behavior for countries that are going to use these drones,” Clarke told the Aspen forum.
Last week, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said that Russia may be seeking to buy Iranian drones after Russia’s own fleet of drones suffered losses during Russia’s assault on Ukraine. The Iranian drones sought by Russia may include the Iranian Shahed-129 and Shahed-191.
“When Russia is running out of them for Ukraine and going to Iran to buy more should cause us all a bit of concern because you can see how valuable they can be in the future fight,” Clarke said on July 22. “The cost of entry, particularly for some of the small unmanned aerial systems, is very, very low, but we have a great business and industrial base that can help us with this.”
Engaging industry for such solutions “is something that has to continue to go up in terms of our priority for the protection, not just of our forces that are forward today–that’s the current problem, but what’s gonna come home to roost in some of these technologies that could be used by our adversaries on our near abroad or even into our homeland,” Clarke said.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness and cyber panels, said during the Aspen forum that DoD must significantly shorten its acquisition cycle so that industry is able to provide the needed drone and counter-drone systems.
“Our adversaries are using very inexpensive, attritable systems, and they recognize that the technologial evolution of any system is 18 to 24 months, as opposed to 10 to 15 years, like it used to be, so we need radical reform in our [Pentagon] contracting systems to keep pace with that vastly condensed technological cycle and do things that are cheaper, more attritable, and more replaceable,” Crow said.
In an April interview for National Defense University’s Joint Forces Quarterly, Clarke called adversary drones the “IEDs (improvised explosive devices) of the future.”
“Everyone remembers 2003–2004 when the number one killer of our forces was IEDs—first in Iraq, and then it transitioned into Afghanistan,” Clarke said in that interview. “Now, an IED has wings and it can move. The wire that connected that IED or the remote device is now harder to defeat. We’re seeing our adversaries really pick up their game in this area—again starting in Iraq. You can clearly see where this technology of small UAS (unmanned aerial systems) can grow. That’s one example that is concerning. We’re also developing technologies and capabilities to counter them and then looking where we can be ‘left of launch’ to disrupt supply chains, transportation, [and] development before it’s too late. Then we only have to defeat them ‘right of launch’ when we’re trying to shoot down the final UAS that could be coming at our forces.”