DAYTON, Ohio–The U.S. Air Force needs to increase funding to modernize counter small unmanned aircraft systems (C-sUAS), a service official said this week.
“In response to urgent operational needs, we fielded [C-sUAS] gear at many of our most critical bases, but we never got enough funding to modernize that gear, which is now 5-6 years old, almost 7 to 8-year-old technology, let alone explore different phenomenologies in the C-sUAS space,” Steven Wert, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s (AFLCMC’s program executive officer for digital programs at Hanscom AFB, Mass., told reporters during AFLCMC’s annual industry days gathering here.
“I have repeatedly said I’m concerned about the lack of funding there, given the increasing number of incursions that we see around the world,” he said. “That situation has not really changed, and it is at the point where labs are developing different capabilities, but we don’t have the ability to inject those into the production program for fielding.”
Wert said that the Air Force has reporting requirements on UAS incursions at U.S. bases and that the service has seen them daily. “In response to those urgent operational [C-sUAS] needs, we fielded more or less fixed systems in really important places, but we didn’t develop mobile systems,” he said.
Of particular concern in the Middle East have been Iranian drones, including the “kamikaze” Shahed 136.
Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) said last month that it plans to award a contract to a small business to provide sUAS for Air Force C-sUAS training
(Defense Daily, July 24).
The Air Force Security Forces Center (AFSC) at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas “has been tasked to establish a C-sUAS Red Team,” AFMC said in a July 24 business notice. “This Red Team will be required to fly drones at AF installations in order to evaluate, test, and train C-sUAS operators. They will need to be trained against multiple drone platforms that simulate the types of drones that might be encountered in the field.”
The winning firm is to provide 10 DJI Mavic 3s, 10 DJI Air 2S drones, 10 DJI Mini 3 drones with controllers, 10 DJI Tello drones, and six Parrot ANAFI USA drones.
The fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act directed DoD to ban the purchase of drones and related systems from China (Defense Daily, Aug. 24, 2022). DoD and other federal agencies have followed suit, while allowing some exceptions. The China-based DJI has been the target of the bans.
“DJI drones are prohibited from normal operational use because of the Chinese components, but these [DJI drones] are authorized as they will be for Red Team use only to simulate available drones purchased on the open market and test our C-sUAS systems,” AFSC said on July 26 of its new C-sUAS solicitation. “They will give our C-sUAS operators the chance to practice using their capabilities against realistic threats. The drones will not be used for anything other than Red Team training tasks.”
After observing the threat “kamikaze” drones have posed in Ukraine, the Pentagon’s Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft System Office (JCO) recently concluded a demonstration with industry showcasing high-powered microwave and kinetic solutions for taking out such systems (Defense Daily, July 17).
JCO’s latest industry demo took place from May 30 to June 23 at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, and included participation from Lockheed Martin [LMT], Thales, SAIC [SAIC], Invariant and MSI Defense.
The one high-powered microwave (HPM) system assessed at the demo was Lockheed Martin’s Mobile Radio Frequency-Integrated UAS Suppressor (MORFIUS), which the JCO described as a “tube-launched, fixed-wing UAS that flies close to sUAS targets and defeats them with HPM pulses.”