New classified plan seeks to unify DOD’s approach for countering enemy drones
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a new classified strategy this week that outlines the Pentagon’s contemporary approach for countering on-the-rise, adversarial drone threats that continue to pose urgent risks to U.S. military personnel and assets — domestically and abroad.
During a briefing with reporters on Thursday, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder announced the limited release of this new holistic and enterprise-wide plan for confronting certain potentially harmful uncrewed systems, which he noted are “changing how wars are fought.”
“This is not necessarily a new thing. But what we’re seeing is the way that drones are being applied — the impact of how they’re being used — something that, again, we can’t just deal with ad hoc. We need to do this in a comprehensive, cohesive manner,” Ryder told DefenseScoop during the briefing.
“And so that’s really what this strategy does, is it essentially enables the [Defense Department] to look across the entire department and our interagency partners, [and it guides] how we can best work together to address this,” he said.
A fact sheet on this new DOD Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems was published online shortly after the briefing.
Details on the plan’s inclusions are light in that release. Officials point out how “from the Middle East to Ukraine and across the globe,” including in the United States, “commercial innovation and the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI), autonomy, and networking technology” are enabling drones to drastically disrupt real-world operations on and off the battlefield.
The unclassified fact sheet states that in order “to mitigate the effects of unmanned systems over the near-, mid-, and long-term, the strategy articulates five ‘strategic ways,’ each of which provides specific direction that the department will pursue in implementation.” They are:
—Deepen understanding and awareness of unmanned systems trends and threats
—Disrupt and degrade unmanned systems threat networks
—Defend against unmanned systems threats to U.S. interests
—Deliver solutions with greater speed, adaptability and scale
—Develop and design the future joint force for unmanned systems-driven ways of war
“At the operational level, these systems are making it more difficult for forces to hide, concentrate, communicate, and maneuver,” the fact sheet states. “At the strategic level, unmanned systems provide aggressors with the ability to reduce the initial human, financial, and reputational costs of conflict.”
In response to most questions Thursday, Ryder largely told reporters he could not share any specific tactics, techniques, or procedures in the new framework at this point.
“It’s really just kind of looking at how we’re approaching this. One, it is ensuring that the department is prepared to conduct counter-unmanned system operations, or counter-UAS operations. Two, it’s looking at how we respond to incidents that do occur by pulling together subject matter experts and resources. And then third, it is tracking counter-UAS equipment,” he said.
The fact sheet noted that the strategy is intended to build on other major DOD initiatives — “including the standup of the Joint Counter-Small UAS Office, the establishment of a Warfighter Senior Integration Group to meet urgent operational needs, and the launch of the Replicator 2 initiative” — to defend against intensifying threats from small uncrewed platforms at some of its most critical installations.
Replicator 2.0 is a key element of the Pentagon’s plan to compete with China. It is intended to accelerate the production of technologies that the U.S. military can use to detect and destroy enemy drones.
The new strategy’s release also comes on the heels of a growing number of reports that have troops actively monitoring bases and airspace in the U.S. and U.K. after mysterious small drones have been spotted and sensed near several bases over the course of multiple days since late November.
“This is not a response to recent events. This is work that’s been going on for sometime — and obviously, very important,” Ryder told DefenseScoop Thursday regarding DOD’s timeframe for the counter-UAS strategy’s production.
