Pentagon prepares for coming drone wars
Countering the threat the plan
More than a decade after the improvised explosive device became the scourge of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon is battling another relatively rudimentary device that threatens to wreak havoc on American troops: the drone.
Largely a preoccupation of hobbyists and experimenting companies, the vehicles are beginning to become a menace on the battlefield, where their benign commercial capabilities have been transformed into lethal weapons and intelligence tools.
Instead of delivering packages, some have been configured to drop explosives. Instead of inspecting telecommunications towers, others train their cameras to monitor troops and pick targets. Instead of spraying crops, they could spread toxic gas, commanders worry. Military strategists envision the day when they will be deployed in robot armies capable of swarming defenses in kamikaze raids.
The range of their use is “up to the creativity of the enemy,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Shields, director of a Pentagon agency called the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization (JIDO), which is focusing on countering the drone threat. Last year, the militant group Hezbollah dropped two small bombs over rebel positions in Syria from a commercially available drone. Weeks later, two Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State were killed when a small drone they had shot down exploded.
Stopping the drones has become a challenge for the Pentagon and its allies. The unmanned aerial vehicles, as they are known, can range from the size of an insect to a shoe box to a large fixed-wing aircraft. Although they have not been anywhere near as deadly as IEDs, drones could become more lethal as technology improves, military officials fear.
In response, the Pentagon is attacking what it sees as a potentially major threat, working to develop lasers and microwaves to blast drones from the sky. Tucked away in a nondescript office park, JIDO’s headquarters is the nerve center of the effort, tracking incidents around the world and working with academia, startups and venture capitalists to stay on top of the latest in drone technology. “It’s almost like the early days of the counter-IED” effort, Shields said.
The office opened in 2006 initially to combat IEDs, but as the enemy evolved, so too has JIDO, which now handles all sorts of “improvised threats,” such as vehicle-borne IEDs, suicide bombers, booby traps and, now, drones. “It was a natural progression for us,” Shields said.
The change was made because of the Islamic State’s “use of drones,” he said, adding that the use of drones is a “regional problem and a global problem.” And it’s not just commercially available quadcopters the Pentagon is worried about. “Right now, JIDO is focused on nonstate-actor use of small drones, but there are certainly other capabilities that are out there - larger, faster and so forth,” Shields said.
Some soldiers already carry specially outfitted “anti-drone” rifles that, instead of firing bullets, use pulses across radio frequencies that interfere with the vehicles’ controls. France and other countries have trained eagles and other birds of prey to attack enemy drones.
“There is definitely a sense of urgency,” said Luis Hernandez, a senior staff member at BAE Systems, which recently participated in the Hard Kill Challenge, a Pentagon-sponsored antidrone competition. “We don’t want this to become another issue like the roadside bombs, the IEDs. Let’s attack this now.”