BEYOND ADMIRING THE PROBLEM: JIATF 401'S JURISDICTIONAL JUMP

Welcome to War Room, the official podcast of the U.S. Army War College Online Journal. Graciously supported by the Army War College Foundation. Please join the conversation at warroom.armoewarcollege.edu. We hope you enjoyed the program. Make sure not to miss a single episode and subscribe to A Better Peace, The War Room Podcast, on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers, and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, or Department of Defense. Welcome to a Better Peace, The War Room Podcast. I'm Dr. Tom Spar, Associate Professor and Desario Chair of Strategic and Theatre Intelligence at the U.S. Army War College, and your host for today's conversation. In early June, I was fortunate to host Lieutenant Colonel Paul Luschenko from the Joint Counter-Small, Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, better known as J-Co, on a podcast titled Vulnerable Skies, Drones and National Security. Where Paul described to us some of the challenges and innovations in the Counter-Small, Unmanned Aircraft Systems fight, both at home and abroad. A lot has changed in the last six months. Notably on August 27, Secretary of War Hegseth ordered the Secretary of the Army to disestablish the J-Co, and establish a joint interagency task force called J-A-F-401 that will report directly to the Secretary of War and better align resources and deliver capabilities to the joint force for the Counter-Small, Unmanned Aircraft System, or UAS fight. We're fortunate to have Paul Luschenko back in the studio today to help us understand the J-A-F-401 mission and the Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft System challenge writ large. Paul is the Chief Strategist for the U.S. Military's J-A-F-401 Counter-Small UAS Task Force stationed in the Pentagon. Paul is a prolific author on all things related to drones and artificial intelligence. He holds a PhD in international relations from Cornell University and several masters degrees. Paul is a faculty member here at the U.S. Army War College during academic year 2024 and remains an adjunct professor helping to teach our emerging technologies and shifting character of war elective. Lieutenant Colonel Luschenko, Paul, welcome to the War Room Studio. Tom, thanks for having me and it's good to be back home. Alright, we'd love to have you here. Okay, let's start with why. What has changed since we spoke six months ago that brought on the Secretary of the Wars Order to stand up, J-A-F-401? Yeah, I think it's a really important question, Tom, and again, thanks for having me here today. It's great to be back. I think it's an important question. It's actually a complicated question. There are some that will take a look at what's happening abroad in places like Ukraine and points operations such as Operation Spider Web as we know 100 drones used by Ukrainian military that struck five military bases deep in Russian territory resulted in the destruction of a third of that country's strategic bomber fleet and call these attacks spectacular to the point where we in the homeland would not be privy to those. And I think the conditions in the homeland are a bit different and potentially this line of argument doesn't really pace the threat that we're experiencing here. So as I step back and I take a look at what has changed, there are two things. The first is the advancement of the threat. And so in terms of so-called drone warfare, what we're seeing is the acceleration of adversarial use of dual use technologies, both military grade and commercial grade technologies that blur the lines between the use of these capabilities during operations, but also just for benign commercial operations as well. And this is undergirded by a fairly robust trends national network of industry that would allow states and non-states actors to acquire this capability. And on that point is really the emergence of a global contagion effect for these drones that now the smaller drones which are commercially available, easily weaponized and low cost are being used not just by nation states and militaries they're in but also by non-state actors and then finally is the threat coming to our own shores. And we see this very clearly at the southern border where Mexican drug cartels are adopting smaller commercially available, easily weaponized drones to the point where some of the practices actually replicate what we're seeing in Ukraine. And so what this means for me is that the US military really needs to prepare to defend and protect everywhere all the time. The other point I would tell you, the second point is that notwithstanding the JCO and I'm sure we'll talk about the JCO and some of its efforts to last several years, there's a real recognition at this point that the key ingredient to entie what I call the Gordian knot of protecting the homeland, countering drones in the homeland is really a whole of government approach that would allow an organization to have you need of effort to synchronize not just the US military's efforts, but also do so in concert with federal agencies and departments. And so you mentioned some of the documents coming out of the president to include the American drone dominance executive order, which established the national task force to restore American air sovereignty. This was matched by Secretary Hegg's own executive orders that pursued drone dominance as well. These things are really important, but unless or until we have synchronization with the military federal agencies and departments, the efforts will continue to be disparate. And I think these two things, the trends that we're witnessing as well as the need for synchronization across the federal government are really important. Okay. There's a lot there to unpack. So let's get our particularly want to come back to that question of the southern border. But before we go too far, I just want to start simple here. Let's talk about the name. But what does the number, where's the significance of the number 401 and where did that come from? I often get this question and it's a good one, right? And so if we take a look at the preservation of the national airspace and the principal agency that is encumbered is charged, is trusted to do so, the federal aviation administration. If you take a look at the regulations, drone pilots, because it's not illegal to fly a drone in the United States, right? Drone pilots that will go above 400 feet are really in restricted airspace. And so what we want to do is make sure that we're optimizing our training, our personnel, our doctrine, so on and so forth to contend with things above 401. So is that, is that what makes a small UAS, a small UAS, I guess, for those of you who didn't listen to our last podcast, our last conversation, you just define what is a small UAS? It's an important question and within US military doctrine, what we take a look at is different grouping of drones, group one through five, group one and two drones are what we've principally focused on in Jada 401. These capabilities weigh less than 1,300 pounds. They fly generally speaking lower than 18,000 feet, and they move relatively slow compared to your large arm and network drones like the MQ-9 Reaper. So approximately 250 miles per hour or less, okay. So back to Jada 401 then, how is this different than what we talked about back in June, a joint counter-small and aircraft system officer, J-Co? I think it's important to benchmark the differences because there are a lot of questions about, is just old wine in a new bottle in another word. So what was the JCO? So the JCO was developed in 2020 to really ready and defend the joint force from drones at home, but principally abroad. In other words, it really wasn't designed to pursue a whole of government approach, which is integral in our estimate to defending the homeland. What this meant practically was that the JCO lacked adequate resources to include monies that they could use to rapidly scale capability to meet urgent operational needs across the joint force. It generally was joint in name only. And so what that means, and we're sitting at the Army War College, right, was that ARMY, the Army was where we drew our personnel. That's how we spelled joint, right, is ARMY, and that's a common joke. And that's right. And by the way, there were talented people. There are talented people within this space. Certainly, we have capitalized on that talent within the jet of 401, but there was really no vested interest in sort of a shared situational awareness for this threat if you're principally an Army organization. And then finally, because of that, and potentially more importantly, we really had no substantial L&O or liaison network that would allow us to work across different services, but also across federal agencies and departments. And so here, what I would flag for your listeners is a great book that was recently published by Sarah Krepp's and James Patton Rodgers called Drone's, what everybody needs to know. And there's an important line in that book that talks about the so-called heterogeneous policies at the state level that inform appropriate use for leadership for governors, in fact, and so when we don't have representation across agencies and departments all the way down to SLTT, state, local, tribal, and territorial, we don't get the synchronization that we would need. And so this begs a question, what's different about the jiat of compared to the JCO? Well, certainly, we've capitalized on some of the great learning from the JCO, but there are three important differences I would point you to. The first is authorities, acquisition authorities, especially. The second is governance, and then finally is structured, and this will be drawn mostly from the action memo that you had referenced earlier that was published on August 27th of this year by Secretary Hegseth. And so in terms of authorities, we centralize and synchronize. Synchronize is probably the better word synchronize, test evaluation, demonstration, and capability development for the joint force. It's not to say that existing programs of record across services, we're going to cash here. We're not going to make use of, but going forward, after the establishment of a jiat if we have the ability to really align capability to urgent operational needs. And what that means in terms of money, and again, this is in the action memo, the director, Secretary General Matthew Ross, can authorize adoption of new capability up to $50 million, which is quite substantial. If it goes beyond that threshold, we go to our main governance sort of mechanism, or oversight mechanism, which is the deputy secretary of war himself that provides unity of effort at the highest levels of defense leadership. The second thing is governance model, and that is, in fact, at the highest elements of defense leadership, where General Ross would have the ability to synchronize decision making at his level across the services, and then present options for decision by the depsec war and the secretary defense. Does that mean he's pulling up initiatives from the services, perhaps, and saying, hey, this is from the army, but it would also work for the Air Force, de-conflicting is that what the governance needs covers? That's exactly right. Because reality is, each service has different needs based upon the requirements for operations. And we want to reflect that. And so it's important that he has a form that all stakeholders can represent their equities, and then bring it to senior levels if needed for decision. Does he have the authority to tell the Air Force don't spend money on that? Because the army already bought this? That is important recognition of de-confliction and complementary efforts that the Jada 401 wants to achieve. In some cases, a capability may have been purchased by the Air Force that has implications for the Navy, even in a lateral environment. And so at his level, he's trying to build complementary efforts across the services, and ensure that, and this is important, that the money, and there's a lot of it in the space right now, is not duplicative or redundant of existing capabilities or even future capabilities that we want to pursue. And that's probably why it's important to have those representatives from the Navy and the Air Force with probably some rank on their shoulders and some contacts back within their force to help do that de-confliction. Absolutely. And it's important why the Jada, if it are perched, can be involved with testing and evaluation across the joint services, because there's also myriad events that are taking place as well. And the secretization role we play is designed to reduce wastefulness, redundancy, and duplicative spending. And the final thing I tell you is our structure as well. So we are truly a joint organization. In fact, I was reflecting today when I walked in to the building here at the Army War College that when I go to my office nowadays, I'm confronted with Marine Corps officers. I'm confronted with Navy officers, with Air Force officers. And so it's not just a name-only, we're truly a joint organization, and that's important for our value proposition across the services as well as our federal agencies and departments. And to that final point is we do have a special hiring authorization to rapidly onboard experts and liaisons from across, not just the military, but also our federal agencies and departments. Yeah, I can't emphasize how important that hiring authority is because you've seen how painful it is sometimes to bring government employees on, it just takes too long. That's right. And Tom, if I could real quick, I'd be remiss if I did not state as a point of difference our mission and our main measure of effectiveness. So when we talk about our mission, the mission is to synchronize these counter drone efforts against these small capabilities across the Department of War to rapidly deliver joint capabilities at scale to protect the U.S. and allied forces and assist federal agencies in defending critical infrastructure and the homeland. That's really an important reflection of some of the updated knowledge we've had, those key trends that I discussed earlier, and the main measure of effectiveness that we have because we're beyond admiring the problem is to ensure rapid delivery of state-of-the-art innovated capabilities into war-fighters' hands to increase the lethality against these capabilities. I think it reflects definitely President Trump's focus on the homeland, and that is so relevant as you just watch the news for a day and you see that. That's right. And in fact, I mean, what a better reflection of the national offense strategy that prioritizes homeland as other than Jada 401. So it's a big mission. Where do you start? You know, there's just a lot going on in this field. As you've mentioned already, you have to synchronize them so high. We even start with this process. Strategy. What we teach our students here linking ends, ways, and means, again, not admiring the problem, not using big swoopy arrows and milestones per se because the measure of effectiveness and mission are clear, but trying to bring some coherence to this space. And so our strategy, again, is very pithy, very clear, very apt, and it's based upon three aggressive lines of effort. The first is enhancing war-fighter lethality. The second is ensuring defense of the homeland. And then the third and final one is joint training. If we're truly going to build not just interoperability, but integration over time, especially with our federal agencies and departments and the state, local, tribal, and territorial authorities, then joint training is absolutely integral for some of the reasons we'll talk about in terms of national security events. And as we take a look at operationalizing the strategy, there are three key tasks that we see at our level. I certainly see at my level as the chief strategist. One is enhancing awareness of this threat, which is about situational awareness and is inherently an intelligence war-fighting function task. What we're doing today here, absolutely, enhancing awareness. The second is orienting against the threat. It's not enough just to understand. You have to orient against it in terms of identifying gaps, limitations that would drive requirements for these urgent operational needs. And then finally is shepherding capabilities that would enhance war-fighter lethality. And the final thing I would add is just ruthless prioritization of what we're attempting to do. And so we talk about three plus two in jade of 401, and this comes from General Ross. His priorities consist of protection at the southern border of US soldiers and personnel from things like the CBP protection of the NCR, the national capital region. And then further what I call the NSSEs, the special national security events like the World Cup that will unfold across various cities in 2026 and then the Olympics that would come shortly thereafter. The plus two comes with our oversight of replicator two and then support to defense critical infrastructure. Now, I'm sure we'll talk about replicator two, but this is the Department of Wars principle means to fund procure deploy capability across different military bases in the United States and abroad to protect our infrastructure. Okay. And that's a carryover from the last administration. That's been ongoing for a couple of years now, right, the replicator. It is. And this actually came in two faces. On the one hand, we had replicator which was designed to proliferate very rapid way of small drones that were low cost, attributable to protect forces abroad, right? So the switchblade is something that comes to mind here, which is essentially a loitering munition. The match for that in terms of countering drones is replicator two. Initially, that was pursued and led by the Defense Innovation Unit, DIU. But because of the enhanced authorities that GAA4ZR1 in general has, we now have oversight of that, which gets back to your point about how do you synchronize everything within the department? This is one of the principle ways we do that. Sure. So we're going to come back to intelligence because you know we're going to get there, and I want to, while you mentioned it, I want to talk about the Southern border. Obviously, a big priority right now, how are you contributing to that fight along the Southern border? And we're the learned, if anything, from that fight. So this gets back to the strategy that we have again, lethality, homeland defense, as well as joint training in the ways through task, key tasks that we would operationalize the strategy, the second being, oriented against it. So General Ross has a framework of response teams that would deploy very quickly to different areas to meet urgent operational needs. One of the first ones, I believe the first one that we deployed was to the Southern border, and it was designed to identify gaps and limitations for, at the time, the 10th Mountain Infantry Division and now the 101st Airborne Division that would enable their increased lethality against these drones. And from the deployments, inter deployments that we've conducted, we've identified, and this is no surprise, several key gaps, sensor gap, an effector gap, and an integration gap. And so talking quickly to these, in turn, is what suite of capability do we have both active and passive, so radio frequency, as well as acoustic, potentially, to provide rapidly situation awareness for leaders and soldiers that are contending with these threats at the Southern border. The second is an effector gap, and we'll talk more about where we're at as department right now to contend with these capabilities in terms of lethal and non-lethal responses, but also being more imaginative about these capabilities in the form factor, are they mobile? What range can they operate at? Are they lethal? They're non-lethal, so the effector gap is also a wicked challenge as well. And finally, what we've seen in our recent operational assessments is the need for integration of these capabilities, seamlessly integrating in a command and control structure that would allow for open modular plug and play use of them, that when they're outfitted with the right data, the right sensors, software training, authorities and sustainment, and conditioned on unique operating environments would be able to operate effectively. And so one of the principal things we're doing right now is working with not just the Southern border and the military outfit there, but also in the department of interior to build integrated distributed sensor network that would allow for enhanced situation awareness at the Southern border. And this will continue going forward in the future, and we are also pacing this methodology with what we're providing to the national capital region in trying to build a common operating picture across federal agencies and departments for protection of the president, his campuses, and different events within the national capital. And two things I want to follow up on there, the integrated sensor network I can picture like in Afghanistan, where we had balloons, we had raid cameras, we had small UASs all bringing that all together all along the borders. I imagine that's an example of what you're absolutely. And I would commend everybody to take a look at some of the great literature after an action reviews that are coming from the 10th Mountain Infantry Division that talks about the fundamental requirement for this, things such as cross domain solution, some of our systems are optimized to reside at the separate, not higher network, but yet that information is really important. Network, you're talking about that. That's right. Okay, to bring it down to the unclassified network where we can share it with all of our partners. You may have a clear. And not just that, but soldiers. Down to their soldier-born capability that would allow them to see a potential threat, potentially augmented with AI, decision support system that would inform and characterize that threat so that it could drive their operations. And they don't have to be in a secure facility to look at the secret information. They can get it right there at the front line. No, that's good. It ties into the second question. I wanted to ask you. You mentioned integration gap. That's urgent in my mind is the, we're seeing in Ukraine where the systems are simple enough that at the front line, the soldier can tinker with it without having to reach back doing a support, you know, an expert on it, a contractor to come in and have to make a change. Is that, are we making progress on that or is that a goal? We are making progress on that. I'll give you a couple examples. So the Army and General George downselected on Andrew Latis to be the C2 backbone for small drones going forward as well. And we are encouraging the services through our new coverage model to align towards a common C2. Again, this is the secret sauce for how we build you new effort not just within the military, but abroad as well. The implications are very clear in the National Capital Region where you have just a menu of different agencies and organizations that are attempting to contend with this threat. I think to, at a broader conceptual level, what General Ross often talks about are these capabilities providing essentially golf clubs that you would be able to pick a driver, a wedge, whatever it may be based upon your need. But that presupposes that we have data standards, that we have common architecture, that we have the right authorities, we have training that would allow us to do the sort of things we're talking about. And you're doing that hard work to make sure all those things are in place, I admire that. So I am the intelligence lead here at the Army War Cod. You are a former intelligence officer. You mentioned it already. So let's talk intel. What is the role of intelligence in this counter UAS fight and keep providing example of how intelligence enables your efforts? Again, I think it comes back to the strategy that I outlined in terms of that first key task there, which is enhancing awareness to help build a faculty, homeland defense, and joint training. What does that really mean? And so because intelligence, as we know, drives operations that the trend analysis that we provide to our interagency partners is really integral and it allows them to understand how they can align their own capability development, testing evaluations and demonstrations to meet this need. Is relates to assessments, probably the best way I can answer this question is talk about an operation that we recently conducted called Operation Clear Horizon. And Clear Horizon was directed by the chief of staff of the Army and the secretary of war several months ago. And it was intended to conduct a joint operational and homeland defense assessment of all fielded and near fielded capabilities for defense of military bases and in potentially critical infrastructure. In other words, is opposed to an industry demo, which is on a fully instrument arranged that figures out different key statistics that would help encourage procurement or not. This was about determining if capability could operate as intended given the most realistic threat. And that is intelligence. And so in this case, it essentially became a research design problem where we took a look at different activities and operations abroad, not just in Ukraine, but also, let's say, in the central command area of operations and built four different scenarios, which were most realistic and replicable of the threat that we could contend with here in the homeland. And so operation spider web, for instance, something like that. But it went well beyond that, variation in C2 or command and control protocol, fiber, LTE, RF hopping, to manage these drone employment. And each service with their capability, and we had about 120 folks out at this range, had the opportunity to incur this threat to determine the effectiveness of their capability. That hasn't intelligence written all over it. Man. How did they do? I have to ask. And speaking, we found that services have some holes in their swing. But yet we have a plan in place to pursue capability of development that would allow us to build integrated systems to contend with the threat as it's unfolding right now. That's good. And totally intrigued by the effector argument, right? When we talked about jamming and microwave and lethal options or kinetic options rather last time. So I'm going to reference our listeners to the June 3rd podcast that we did where Paul went into great detail about that just in the interest of time. Because I got a couple of the questions I want to get to and our clock is ticking here. One in particular, in his memo establishing giant of 401, the Secretary of War says he wants to focus on speed over process. What does he mean by that? And is there danger in that? And then how do you mitigate that danger to get the speed over the process? Well, I don't think it's an either or we're throwing the baby out with the bath, whether the reality is certainly within the building or the Pentagon. We do have a process. I've talked about our governance model. But the reality also is the fact that we have a plethora of reports, studies, after action reviews, so on and so forth that would inform the threat. And so we're well beyond admiring the problem. We are a results-based organization. Again, the main measure of effectiveness is to provide innovative state-of-the-art capability to war fighters to increase their lethality. And I think that's potentially what the Secretary of War, not putting words of his mouth, is talking about is that this threat, as he talks about, is the biggest battlefield innovation in a generation. I think Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll talked about in the face of the nation being something that threatens all of humanity, right? And so at this point, we have to move out quickly. And I think the solution to do that for a whole government approach is Jada 401 in this space. It's refreshing to hear. OK. We're wrapping up here. So I want to give you the opportunity. What is your greatest challenge or frustration in this counter-UAS fight? You've mentioned a couple already. And then how are you attempting to get after them? So I pondered this question a lot as I was driving from Washington, D.C. to the Army Work College. And we could talk about any number of factors, certainly, within the homeland, policies and authorities. I want to table that. And I want to talk about the value proposition of Jada 401. Again, the JCO made tremendous gains in terms of capability, development that we have capitalized on. We talked about that before in a previous podcast. But the value proposition to allow Jada 401 to help synchronize in concert with federal agencies and departments as whole of a government approach is how we contend with this cat mouse game of capability, development by our adversaries. And then what we do in response. So the reaction counter-action reaction game that we know very well as intelligence officers or in my case, a former intelligence officer. And so as we talk about the value proposition in this whole government approach, I think there's several things to be aware of. One is certainly updated policies and authorities that would allow us to streamline defense in the homeland. So when powering, for instance, state, local, tribal and territorial authorities to operate at time of need, I mean, frankly, these are first responders and they have to be empowered. And there's legislation at this point in the Congress that attempts to empower them in these ways. The other is facilitating information sharing across federal agencies, departments to enhance situational awareness. And here, for better or for worse, I think the analogy has to be 9/11. I mean, the terrorist attacks of that, I would point your listeners to the 9/11 commission report that talks about the importance of intelligence sharing, but potentially the need to know grading against that. And so what we're trying to do is ensure the right credentials, right accesses to flag intelligence for agencies and departments that would allow us to operate hand in glove in this space. The other thing here with whole of government is funding and it's got to be aligned across the U.S. government for capability development to reduce wasfulness and redundant spending. Within the Department of War in Jennifer's era one, that's about our oversight of Replicator two, but what we're trying to do with these agencies and departments is talk about capabilities that would have implications for them as well. And then finally is joint training, right? The need for joint training to allow for skilled development that can proliferate broadly across formations. And if I could, for clear horizon, one of the key tasks was to demonstrate that regardless of your military occupational specialty, this is an every soldier problem. And so we actually produce an order that was published by the director of the Army staff to have two one cab division from Fort Hood deployed to EGLE and Air Force Base to operate on these systems. It wasn't an FSR or a technical subject matter expert from Andrew or another industry partner. It was soldiers that we trained quickly to operate this capability and we have to replicate that approach with our agencies and departments and we can do that in various ways going forward. Yeah, it becomes almost like a fire in your weapon. Everyone's got to be able to pick these things up and know how to use them, just never soldier. But the other thing you mentioned there is just that facilitating info sharing. I love the 9/11 example and we've talked a lot about instead of a need to share or need to know and need to share mentality, right? So where we got to get that information spread across the different silos of excellence as we call them. That's right. And so for the need to share as you put it, what we're doing right now is really fleshing out our liaison network and trying to capitalize on very important agencies and departments that would allow for rapid delivery of capability at time and need. So for instance, the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission that manages Spectrum in the homelands. So there are a variety to include also the Department of Homeland Security. And so you can see how we're filling out through our Giattif sort of moniker acronym, this footprint that will allow us to meet this threat, get it time I'm need. All right. So Paul, we're about out of time here, but I always want to give you one parting shot here. Is there anything we didn't talk about that you think is really important for our listeners to know. I think that we have to be aware that there is no panacea or silver bullet for this threat, a small drone. Right. We're constantly talking about an attempting to adjudicate within Giattif 401 is what does good enough look like for forced protection informed a lot from our observations operation clear horizon. And so layer defense and that golf club approach that General Ross has emphasized is really, important going forward and it comes down to being a little bit more novel and creative about the effectors in a homeland context. And so low collateral defeat is a terminology that we often use, which is about reducing collateral effects on civilians in their property, right. But integrating these capabilities, both non lethal and lethal over time and space based upon bearing altitude range heading of a drone is going to be really important for us going forward. Paul, I'm really glad we got you back. Thank you for making the trip up here to Carlisle barracks and this has been enlightening conversation for me and hopefully for our listeners as well. Unfortunately, our time has run out. So I want to thank you Lieutenant Colonel Paul Luschenko for joining us on a better piece the Warroom podcast and wish you the best of luck as you continue this daunting task of standing up to join in in their agency task force 401 and really securing the nation from this emerging threats. And thanks to all of you for listening and please send us your comments on this program and suggestions for future programs. If you enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to subscribe to a better piece and please take the time to review and rate this podcast has it helps us get the word out to other interested listeners. From the Warroom, I am Tom Spar. And that concludes our program. Thank you for listening. The views expressed in this podcast reflect those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views policies or positions of the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense. Let us know what you think. Provide us your feedback, comments or suggestions through our webpage at warroom.armywarcollege.edu and have a great day.