How can a major U.S. installation be told to “stop the drone” while also being told it is not allowed to?
The heart of a Department of Defense Inspector General assessment that discovered counter-drone defenses at U.S. installations are undermined not so much by missing technology as by unclear authority is that. The watchdog believes that the department has already generated a tangle of guidance, over 20 documents containing memos, manuals, execution orders, and checklists, but crucial needs still clash with each other, and the commanders and security teams do not know when they can carry out the action and when they can use this or that tool actually. It is not an abstract problem: the IG team visited 10 places where unmanned aircraft intrusion had already taken place.
Another example, which is one of the most compelling illustrations presented in the report, is the base of Luke Air Force in Arizona where 75 percent of the global F-35 pilots are trained. Although that mission focus, the installation was not assigned a “covered” facility as described in Section 130i of Title 10, namely, an essential designation since it dictates the ability and manner in which a facility may utilize approved counter-UAS capabilities. According to what the report summarized, the DOD officials informed them that they were not taught anything about training and that the counter-drone capabilities could not be used by installation officials to curb UAS activity during planes training.
According to the results of the IG, there is a structural problem: Section 130i lists nine categories of sites and activities, which are eligible to protection, but training does not belong to them. That border creates a patchwork in which places deemed mission-critical may be out of the legal umbrella, and other facilities may be subject to haphazard interpretations on whether they qualify. The problem in real time was exemplified by Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, an Air Force plant long associated with aerospace work of an advanced type. The plant was listed on an Air Force list of covered sites, but officials has been telling the investigators that it was not covered when others could not confirm its coverage. Individually, the Air Force confirmed it was tracking several UAS above the plant and that the FAA their action was to temporarily restrict flights around the common-use airfield, highlighting the role that aviation safety nets can outpace a department-wide response to countermeasures.
The approval pathway may drag even when a facility is obviously in scope. Section 130i approval is conditional on an operationally tested counter-UAS “package,” a 2020 DoD requirement but the services follow different rules of submission and internal sign-offs. The IG concluded that an intensive percentage of installations lack the operational approval to utilise C-UAS capabilities, which results in the situation where sightings and incursions are addressed as security incidents and only respond with observation and reporting and coordination as opposed to interdiction.
There is a similar body of literature that supports the main message of the IG. A Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office and RAND study relied upon homeland-related tabletop exercises to simulate the development of drone incidents around bases, focusing on what escalates them, information exchange, and the necessity to coordinate with non-DoD actors. The drill also emphasized the logic of operation behind “fly-away” kits of counter-drone teams and equipment that can be deployed quickly and the need to have a layered defense that can escalate to less lethal effects at the outskirts to more tightly focused high-consequence measures closer to the installation.
DoD has started concentrating the responsibility through the formation of the Joint Interagency Task Force 401 that would coordinate counter-UAS responses. The IG recommendation is narrower: there is only one, unified policy with roles and authorities, clarifications of what it means to be covered throughout the department, and the process of Section 130i approvals is standardized.
The counter-drone issue on American soil until that consolidation becomes an everyday occurrence is not so much about sensors and interceptors as it is about who has permission to use them, where, and by what directive.
