The growing threat of small drone systems to deployed U.S. and allied forces in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility is similar to the inception of terrorist groups’ use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq more than 15 years ago, the head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Feb. 8.
CENTCOM Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told the Middle East Insitute (MEI) during a kickoff address to the first annual MEI-CENTCOM conferene that a long-term technical concern for him is the proliferation of relatively cheap, commercially available small UAS.
“There’s been an increase in the use of UAS by both state and non-state actors, and they represent a growing threat to the United States and to our regional allies and partners,” he said. “And I’m not just talking about large, unmanned platforms, which are the size of a conventional fighter jet that we can see and deal with by normal air defense means. I’m talking about ones that you can go out and buy at Costco right now in the United States for $1,000. These systems are inexpensive, easy to modify and weaponize and easy to proliferate. They provide adversaries the operational ability to surveil and target U.S. and partner facilities while affording plausible deniability in a disproportionate return on the investment–all in our adversaries’ favor.”
“I argue all the time with my Air Force colleagues that the future of flight is vertical and unmanned, and I believe we’re starting to see it now,” McKenzie said. “The growing threat posed by these [small UAS] systems, coupled with our lack of dependable, networked capabilities to counter them, is the most concerning tactical development since the rise of the improvised explosive device in Iraq.”
U.S. forces in Iraq first confronted IEDs in July 2003.
The Saudi-led military coalition fighting Houthi forces in Yemen said that it intercepted and destroyed four armed drones launched by Houthis that were heading to southern Saudi Arabia last weekend.
The predominantly Shi’ite Houthis overthrew the Saudi-backed Yemeni government in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and seized much of the country’s northwestern territory, a region bordering Saudi Arabia, in late 2014 and early 2015. The United Nations, which has called Yemen the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, said that more than 200,000 people have died from fighting and ancillary effects, such as hunger.
On Feb. 5, the U.S. State Department said it had notified Congress of its intention to drop the Houthis from the U.S. list of terrorist organizations–a decision that would reverse the former Trump administration’s designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group late last year.
The United States “is deeply troubled by continued Houthi attacks,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement on Feb. 7. “We call on the Houthis to immediately cease attacks impacting civilian areas inside Saudi Arabia and to halt any new military offensives inside Yemen, which only bring more suffering to the Yemeni people. We urge the Houthis to refrain from destabilizing actions and demonstrate their commitment to constructively engage in U.N. Special Envoy [Martin] Griffiths’ efforts to achieve peace. The time is now to find an end to this conflict.”
Last June, the JCO picked eight counter-drone systems to comprise the Pentagon’s joint “system of systems” against small UAS. They include radars, electronic warfare tools, kinetic capabilities and common command and control platforms in the Army’s FS-LIDS system; the Air Force’s Negation of Improvised Non-state Joint Aerial threats (NINJA); the Navy’s CORIAN; and the Marine Corps’ Light-Mobile Air Defense Integrated System, or L-MADIS, vehicle-mounted drone jammer for the mobile C-sUAS systems.
The consolidated portfolio of counter-drone capabilities is to be interoperable with the Army’s Forward Area Air Defense Command and Control (FAAD-C2) and to include the Air Force’s MEDUSA C2 and Marine Corps’ Air Defense System Integrator.
For troops on foot, the JCO said last year that it is moving forward with U.S. Special Operations Command’s handheld Bal Chatri counter-drone tool and the commercially-available Dronebuster jammer and Smart Shooter kinetic capability.
“Right now, we’re on the wrong side of the cost imposition curve because this [small UAS] technology favors the attacker, not the defender,” McKenzie said on Feb. 8. “But we’re working very hard to fix this and flatten the curve. We have a variety of systems in the field already, and I know that it has the direct attention of leaders in the Department of Defense and the Army, the executive agent for Counter UAS. Those are all steps in the right direction, but it worries me because I think what we’re seeing is the emergence of a new component of warfare, part of a ‘system of systems,’ and how we work our way through this challenge will be closely watched by our competitors and our adversaries.”