Operation buzzkill: US Army prepares for attacks by drone swarms, fearing a ‘critical gap’ in defences

The US Army has identified a “critical gap” in its ability to face swarms of drones that could attack small units of soldiers on the battlefield by confusing radar systems, overwhelming larger aircraft or simply exploding when they reach an assigned target.

The service has been examining the issue for years, but General Daniel B. Allyn, the service’s vice chief of staff, said Tuesday that defeating such attacks will be essential in the future. Initially the Army must be able to stop single drones from carrying out surveillance and reconnaissance against the United States, but the service must evolve from there to stopping swarm attacks using both new technology and old-school techniques, he said.

“For how the Army operates, we expect that we’re going to have to be very, very effective in distributed operations in small units as we move forward,” said Allyn. “The idea that you don’t present a welcoming target to an adversary is something that has served us well from the early days of warfare, and will remain critical. The ability to leverage denial and deception and effective manoeuvre is going to be equally important as any technological advances we come up with.”

It’s another sign that the Pentagon is preparing for combat in which adversaries have access to drone and other cutting-edge technologies. Drone swarms have not yet appeared in combat against the United States, but individual unmanned systems are in use by China, Iran and Russia, among other nations.

Allyn, speaking at a breakfast in Washington, DC, with journalists, said the Army could counter drone swarms with some combination of directed energy or “kinetic” means, which typically means conventional ammunition. But he hesitated to get specific, an indication that aspects of the research may be classified.

The Army has been carrying out experiments on drone swarms in several locations, including White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and Fort Bliss in western Texas. Allyn said he recently visited Fort Bliss and came away impressed with how soldiers are using a combination of commercially available equipment with undisclosed operational manoeuvres to take on drones.