Pentagon testing tech to fight ISIS drones

Terrorists’ success in turning devices into deadly weapons presents challenges for U.S.

WASHINGTON — At the vast, windswept White Sands Missile Range in Southern New Mexico earlier this year, nearly a dozen military contractors armed with laser guns, high-tech nets and other experimental systems met to tackle one of the Pentagon’s most vexing counterterrorism conundrums: how to destroy the Islamic State’s increasingly lethal fleet of drones.

The militant group has used surveillance drones on the battlefield for more than two years. But an increase in deadly attacks since last fall — mostly targeting Iraqi troops and Syrian militia members with small bombs or grenades, but also threatening U.S. advisers — has highlighted the terrorists’ success in adapting off-the-shelf, low-cost technology into an effective new weapon.

The Pentagon is so alarmed by this growing threat — even as it routs the Islamic State from its strongholds in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria — that it has launched a $700 million crash program overseen by two senior Army generals to draw on the collective know-how and resources of all branches of the armed services, Silicon Valley and defense industry giants like Boeing and Raytheon to devise tactics and technology to thwart the menace.

One important piece of that effort was the contest in New Mexico. It amounted to a Pentagon counter-drone bake-off, called the Hard Kill Challenge, to see which new classified technologies and tactics proved most promising. The results were decidedly mixed, and underscore the longterm problem confronting the Pentagon and its allies as it combats the Islamic State and al-Qaida in a growing number of hot spots around the world beyond Iraq and Syria, including Yemen and Libya.

“Threat targets were very resilient against damage,” the Pentagon agency assigned to help crack the problem, the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization, said in response to questions from The New York Times about how the contractors fared against mock enemy drones. “Bottom line: Most technologies still immature.” The agency said some of the technology might work well with “adjustments and further development.”

In the meantime, the Pentagon has rushed dozens of technical specialists to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan to help protect U.S. troops and to train and, in some cases, equip local allies against the drone threat, which has killed more than a dozen Iraqi soldiers and wounded more than 50. The aircraft, some as small as model airplanes, conduct reconnaissance missions to help Islamic State fighters attack U.S.-backed ground forces. Other drones drop bombs or are rigged with explosives to detonate on the ground.

“These things are really small and hard to detect, and if they swarm in groups, they can overload our ability to knock them all down,” said J.D. Johnson, a retired three-star Army general who previously commanded the threatdefeat agency, and now heads Army programs for Raytheon. “The threat is very resilient and well-resourced, and we have to be looking one or two moves ahead to defeat it.”

U.S. troops are using an array of jammers, cannons and other devices to disrupt, disable or destroy the enemy drones, often quadcopters rigged with explosives. And the military has increased airstrikes against Islamic State drones on the ground, their launch sites and their operators.

“This isn’t just an Iraq and Syria problem; it’s a regional and global problem,” Lt. Gen. Michael Shields, director of the threatdefeat organization and one of the two generals overseeing the effort, said in a telephone interview. “These are airborne IEDs,” meaning improvised explosive devices.

Indeed, the drone threat is going global. Iranian drones have buzzed U.S. Navy ships more than a dozen times in the Persian Gulf this year. In Europe, U.S. and allied soldiers accustomed to operating from large, secure bases in Iraq and Afghanistan now practice using camouflage netting to disguise their positions and dispersing into smaller groups to avoid sophisticated Russian surveillance drones that could potentially direct rocket or missile attacks against personnel or command posts.

In the United States, authorities voice increasing concerns about possible Islamic Stateinspired drone attacks against dams, nuclear power plants and other critical infrastructure. Over the summer, the Pentagon issued classified guidance to base commanders around the country to warn local communities to keep commercial drone hobbyists away from installations.

Earlier this month, an Arabic publication offered guidance from the Islamic State to its followers on how to evade U.S. drones. This past week, the Islamic State released through its Amaq news agency a video of an operation in which its fighters tracked what it identified as a Syrian news media vehicle and then dropped a munition on it.

“There’s a DIY aspect to this,” said Don Rassler, a researcher at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which has studied Islamic State drones.

The peak of the threat came this spring during the fight to wrest Mosul from Islamic State control in northern Iraq, military officials said. Since then, the military has repeatedly attacked Islamic State drones in the air and on the ground. Earlier this month, the Pentagon said it had killed Junaid ur Rehman, a senior Islamic State drone pilot trainer and engineer, in an airstrike near Mayadin, Syria, south of Raqqa.

“We are destroying their launch points, we’re killing their engineers, we’re dismantling their manufacturing facilities and their users,” said Col. Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq.

In Washington, however, Pentagon officials worry about the rapid spread of armed drones to other conflict zones, where the United States and its local partners may be less prepared to confront the threat. In February, the Defense Department created a special task force headed by Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Ierardi, a top officer on the military’s Joint Staff, to coordinate a Pentagon-wide counter-drone campaign along with Shields.

“These are learning experiences, and the adversary will adapt,” said Ierardi, who added that the Pentagon’s $700 million effort was likely to grow in the next few years.

Some of that money will go to help organize events like the Hard Kill Challenge in New Mexico, where major defense contractors including Boeing and BAE Systems, as well as much smaller specialty technology companies, participated in a fiveday competition that extended longer for some firms.

Organizers said they were searching for technologies that could defeat enemy drones with “a fly-swatter approach.” Contestants had to destroy or disable 30 drones flying more than 250 yards away. A total of 10 systems competed, including four high-energy laser weapons and an attack drone that carried a big net to capture hostile drones, military officials said.

Military officials and contractors balked at talking about details of the technology involved, much of which is both classified and proprietary.

Shields declined to provide specific details about the result of the shootout, other than to say, “What we learned is there are limitations with various technology.” The Islamic State, he noted, “is an adaptive enemy. They have access to talent, resources and a global supply chain.”