VULNERABLE SKIES: DRONES AND NATIONAL SECURITY

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.armywarcollege.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 a serial chair of Theatre and Strategic Intelligence at the U.S. Army War College, and your host for today's conversation. You'll be hard-pressed to find a discussion on modern warfare that doesn't mention the prevalence of unmanned aircraft systems or U.S.s. And anyone watching, the conflict in Ukraine will easily understand their emerging importance. The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army, and the Chief of Staff of the Army have all identified the need to modernize the Army's unmanned aircraft systems and our counter U.S. systems throughout our military formations. The Chief of Staff of the Army, General Randy George, has made closing the counter-small U.S. gap one of his critical objectives in the ongoing Army Transformation Initiative. We are fortunate to have Lieutenant Colonel Paul Urshenko in the War Room Studio today to discuss efforts to develop joint counter-small U.S. capabilities. Paul is the Chief Strategist for the U.S. Military's Counter-Small, Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, or J.K.O. Paul is a prolific author, publishing several edited volumes and articles in prestigious academic journals on drones, technology, and modern warfare. He holds a PhD in International Relations from Cornell University and several masters degrees. Paul is a special relationship here with the Army War College, as he taught here during academic year 2024, before heading to the joint counter-small unmanned aircraft systems office. Paul continues to serve the War College as an adjunct professor, even while stationed down at the Pentagon. And he teaches our emerging technology and shifting character of war elective. Lieutenant Colonel Urshenko, Paul, welcome to the War Room Studio. Tom, it's good to be home again. It was really great having you here teaching full-time last year. You know, we partner you with John Nagel in the classroom, which means you did most of the work. I was just teaching assistant. Right. Take a, take a tip shot at our mutual friend, John, he's not here. But no, you did great, you did great work for us, and you're really your level of commitment and ability to produce scholarship really lifted the entire organization. So it's super to have you back in the studio here with us today. So you know, Albert Einstein said, "If I had an hour to save the world, I'd spend the first 55 minutes defining the problem." So let's start there. What is the problem we're trying to solve? What effect do you see this proliferation of small UAS as having on warfare in the U.S. military? Well, first of all, Tom, thanks for having me again. It's a pleasure to be here. We could spend an hour talking about this question alone. But I would say that drones and modern warfare really have important effects for both the friendly and the enemy. And just simply, when we talk about the cheap benefit of drones from modern warfare for U.S. and coalition military forces, we're really talking about precision on the battlefield to strategically affect change, conduct an operation, kill a terrorist, for instance, while doing so in such a way that protects our own forces and buys down the risk to non-combatants, because we know that reducing liability of harm for civilians on the battlefield is a strategic legal and moral imperative. So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, for our enemy and increasing proliferation across non-state actors, terrorist and narco-terrorist, for instance, is the asymmetry of these capabilities, that for relatively little money, they could adopt commercially available and easily weaponized capabilities that impose cost against U.S. forces asymmetry. This is almost like they're democratizing the battlefield. Everybody can do it. That's everybody has access. That's exactly right. And so the the the barrier of entry, you know, to compete and level the playing field is much lower nowadays with these drones. So, so you please describe the mission of the joint counter-small unmanned aircraft officer, Jacob. I'm glad there's a short acronym for that. By the way, it's a tongue twister of a name. What is the core task of the Jacob? Okay, so I think this is linked, neatly to your first question of the recognition of the threat in 2016 of these drones proliferating across, especially the sent-com central command AOR area of operations, the Islamic State, and the use of these capabilities against U.S. personnel. And so at that time, there was a felt need, a perceived need to build an organization to synchronize preparedness across the joint force and in concert with the interagency to protect forces abroad, but also to provide for homeland defense against these capabilities. You stated the democratization of them in the homeland. So the core mission of the JCO is to do that is to represent joint equities and concert with the interagency to protect ourselves and our coalition partners. Now, in terms of the imperatives and our boss, Major General Dave Stewart thinks and speaks in terms of imperatives, we have four key imperatives. The first is at a joint level is to provide better understanding and situational awareness for the trends that relate to especially small UAS unmanned aerial systems. We call them Group 1 through 3. They weigh less than 1300 pounds, fly lower than 18,000 feet, and really carry a small payload in fly slow, right? The second point is to connect the enterprise, both within the U.S. Department of Defense for preparedness, but also externally to key allies and partners across key regions to include especially sent-com given the threat and increasingly the Indo-Asian Pacific based upon the defense planning guidance, right? And then finally, is to accelerate solutions across the .mil PFP, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, as well as support the warfighter in doing so. Okay, that's great. You mentioned the homeland, and I'm glad you did, because this is not just an overseas problem. It's not just an employed forces problem. Future and future conflicts will invariably also be thought here in the homeland. There's been a lot in the news about the threat of a small UAS to the homeland. How do we prepare for drone attacks in the homeland? And what are the largest challenges perhaps unique to the homeland? This is a great question. And increasingly, I spent a lot of my time with our homeland policy analysts thinking about this question, and really the fundamental difference between defending the homeland versus force protection abroad is the standard at which we can engage a capability that's incoming based upon updated bearing altitude in range. So what does that mean? So hostile intent and hostile act are the predicates for engaging a small UAS at a base, let's say, in Iraq or elsewhere, whereas the homeland is much more complicated based upon our need to balance civil rights and civil liberties. It's not illegal, for instance, to drive a small drone in the air, if you're a civilian, with perceived threat to national security interests. And so what we have to do in the homeland is to ensure that we train our soldiers, especially garrison commanders, with an understanding of the authorities and the policies that they can operate under an engaging capability. And that sounds relatively easy, but it's very challenging because for the most part, when we talk about homeland defense, what we're talking about is not just simply military bases, but critical infrastructure to include things like power grids, water sources, so on and so forth. And that inherently is a law enforcement mission. What we use is the term SLTT, state, local, tribal, and territorial sort of mission. And so it is different to think about homeland defense versus force protection of soldiers and coalition forces abroad. In a recent exercise, what we found was that we are just out of position, frankly, in the homeland in terms of the kit, in terms of training, in terms of policies and authorities. Things as simple as how do we communicate across the interagency with the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration? How do we share information? What does it mean to coordinate high and jamming capabilities like counter precision navigation and timing? Yeah, you don't want to shut down commercial aircraft because you're trying to take down... That's absolutely down drone. The other thing, Tom, is that we lack, and this is clearly stated, admitted by our senior leaders to include the Northern Command Commander, General Geho, and the Vice Chief of Staff in the Army, we lack the ability to identify friend or foe at installations. Domain awareness is a huge challenge for us. And then the final thing I'd say too is that we haven't really optimized the total army, the total joint force in terms of the National Guard. The levers are capability down to the state level to work on behalf of homeland defensive bases. And what makes a UAS bought at Walmart by a foe look different than one bought by the neighbor kit next door? Nothing. They're the same except that one may have a grenade strapped to it or something that's going to inflict damage on a military base. That's right. And so when we talk about training for installation commanders, we partner with Rand, the research and development corporation, to do longitudinal-to-studies on vulnerability, but also attitudes among soldiers for these capabilities. And what we found in working with them is this concept of dread that you would have sort of an innate fear of drones on an installation, because it's just so new and normal. But maybe the perceived impact of that capability is less. And so the difference between these two sort of outcomes is this concept of dread. Right, right. So this is not new. When I was in Afghanistan from 2019 to 2020, we were experimenting with different technologies to bring down small UASs because the Taliban were using them. And it was the Walmart purchase drone with their grenades launched strapped to the bottom of the dropping it on a base. It's 2025 now. And they're much more advanced, especially with the war in Ukraine. We've seen incremental advances. So what are some of the common themes you're seeing as you interact across the combat and commands and countering small UASs? And what technologies and techniques are working now? Because we couldn't figure it out in 2020. So I'm interested to hear what's working now. Yeah, so on the threat side of it, clear trends, and a lot of this stuff is, of course, representative in the open source intelligence, militarization of capability, increased lethality of capability for the reasons that you've talked about brought in scope and scale of capability. Certainly, Ukraine is a great example of that. But also it's germane of the homeland with increased intelligence reporting of the way that Mexican drug cartels are now weaponizing commercially available, easily weaponized drone, the ability to operate off the grid, per se, which is to say, not use GPS, those sort of back to the future, almost anticornistic capabilities are very challenging to try to retool your suite of capabilities and technology to defeat. As relates to friendly forces, I think we've had some marginal success, although we still lack kit, especially in the homeland, is relates to defeat of these capabilities. And so the JCO, through its demonstration portfolio, we actually have no authority to purchase anything, we're influencing industry and joint force partners to buy stuff on our behalf. But through that sort of process, we have encouraged the fielding of FS lids, fixed site, low, slow, small, unmanned aircraft system interceptor. And that has sort of a KU band radar, coupled with a small form factor, less costly missile, called the coyote, that has proliferated across central command based upon the threat there. And indeed, President Trump, during his recent trip to the Middle East, agreed upon selling 15 or so these capabilities to Qatar. And so that's a real sort of highlight for the JCO's development of capability or influence rather. Similarly, as the advanced precision kill weapon system, which is a small form factor, which is now bought in various versions across the joint forces, it could be a short, it could be on a ship. This is a lot of influence that the JCO has made in this respect as well. I will step back and say that the material solutions are really important, but really the doctrinal implications of the study, the large and two little studies that the JCO has conducted have informed us that the concept for employment is just as important. So this concept of layer defense is something that we ought to talk about because it's remained both deployed and in the homeland as well. Yeah, that's good. I'll come back to the downturn here, and I wanted to talk about the different layers of defenses. You shared a few of the publications you've had with me, which I recommend anyone just to Google, Paulus Shanko and small UASs and you'll see all the things that he's written about this. But there are certain layers how we engage and there's a logic behind that. Can you describe the layers and then the command and control and the decision making process is involved in that? Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, we're a mouthpiece for the joint force. A lot of what we write about is stitching together some great insights and experiences down to the battalion command level to include colleagues of mine who have recently deployed in Iraq with the 10th Mountain. But in general, really what we're talking about is force protection calibrator against bar, which is a useful sort of acronym, the increased bearing altitude and range of a capability from an installation. And if you understand a small UAS group one through three, in terms of that, you would want to first extend operational reach, right, to defeat, to confuse, to spoof a capability. And you can think in terms of electronic warfare. In fact, the JCO has invested in EW capabilities that provide for extended standoff. To jam it. Exactly. Pretty far out. To jam it. That's right. And so that's the first sort of layer, right? The second layer would be will be called softkill. And so based upon the increased bearing altitude and range of a drone from an installation, you could use things such as high powered laser. In fact, SETCOM has experimented with capability, has been influenced by the JCO that's been placed on vehicles, strikers, for instance. The final layer is your hardkill. Through things such as person born, soldier born, machine guns, interlocking fires, a coyote, this is the final protective fire. And so really what you want to do is try to synchronize your capability, lethal, non-lethal, cross time and space, to achieve as much standoff as possible before it comes very, very close. Without having to hardkill it and bring down a fireball in the in the homeland. That's exactly. And then Tom, I'd also say too, there's another implication here. And that's the cultural implication of retraining soldiers in this type of conflict where the aerial domain provides threats and ways that it hadn't before. And so when talking to my peers, deployed abroad, battle drills for when you put on your kit, how you put on your kit, and how you take it seriously, is a little bit, if not a lot different, from how we operated in fixed site structures during the GWAT and the Global War and Terror and Coin, where air superiority wasn't really an issue. I got to ask, are we having success with lasers on UAS? I hadn't heard that and it sounds awfully Star Wars-ish. But that's right, Tom. I think we're in the beta-testing phase at this point, right? And so what I've seen from the initial reports from Scentcom is we need to do a lot more work as it relates to that. But at this point, we're really not wasting time in moving out quickly and smartly in concert with the defense innovation unit on this. In fact, there is a forthcoming executive order, or so I'm told from the Trump administration, which is attempting to energize the industrial base in the United States to increase investment, not just for homeland defense, but also force protection in terms of these capabilities. So you're affecting executive orders. The research you're doing, the recommendations you're making are getting the whole way up. Well, that's the remit of the JCO. We take it very seriously, because without the JCO, I think it's really important that people understand this. Without the JCO, you really lack a conduit that bridges what's taken place at the tactical operational and strategic level with policymakers and communicating in such a way that can affect change. If you allow me, let me just give you one example. So we recently ran the largest scale tabletop exercise for five years at the JCO. It brought together 30 agencies as well as the White House, specifically the national and Homeland Security Council over a hundred participants. And the core objective that we pursue was trying to understand how the JCO could best enable U.S. Northern command to protect the homeland. And from that, we came up with a series of five implementation decisions that we had briefed up through the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, General Mingus, who provides our governance at the joint force level. And those things consist of recommendations for better coordination with the FAA for, again, jamming capabilities. How do we coordinate in terms of sharing information and intelligence with our partners, optimizing the National Guard Bureau, as we've talked about. And then further, as shifting the legislation to have point of sale registration for small drones in the homeland, so we can quickly identify friend from foe. A veritable license, if you will, for a small drone. And so these things are really, really important because we have shifted the conversation on policy that they're going to codify the executive orders. And indeed, representatives are now talking about things like, how do we define an aircraft? Right now, the law makes no distinction between a man and a man aircraft, and soldiers are held liable for taking down a drone as if they took down a commercial airliner. So that's the level that JCO is operating on. Can you develop a little bit more than National Guard piece? Because they seem like a critical element in this, but they're all a little different, right? That's right. Where you go. So how do you, how do you handle that? I think it's a great question, right? And it's, it's a really important question because it's sensitive, right? I mean, there are trenched interests. It's down to the state level. Of course, our listeners will understand the sort of national guards embedded in all states, territories of the United States, directly responsive to the tag of the Adjutant General. And so the really, there's, there's two approaches that we have considered. One is sort of homeland support teams. These are regionally aligned. There's 11 or so of these in the United States. The other is civil support teams that right now, when we teach our students, this, right, have been aligned against a sea birdie mission. So chemical, radiological, nuclear, sort of explosion. And they're at all states. Very responsive to the tags. So the question is, which one, which thread do you want to pull? And in consultation with the National Guard Bureau, who was represented at our, at our exercise recently, it seems that the path of least resistance would be the civilian civil support teams for a couple of reasons. One is they're not regionally aligned, meaning they're directly responsive to the tags. They can be deployed very, very quickly. The second is, although I would never argue against the importance of preparing for potential nuclear escalation in the homeland, even the probability likelihood of that looks a little bit low, if not a lot lower compared to the threat, right? I mean, 350 incursions at over 100 installations is what we're tracking with small UASs. With small UASs. That's in the last year. That's in the last year, you know, that's from General Keyha's testimony. And so the likelihood that we're going to continue to observe that versus sort of nuclear escalation provocations is a lot different. And then the, the other thing too, is that the money's there, right? There's, there's the large substantial fun to really get these CSTs involved. And so our proposal to US senior Army leaders and joint force leaders is we got to take a look at retooling the CSTs is a way that the National Guard Bureau down to the state level can work closely with more responsive to the SLTT consideration, state local tribal and territorial. And then I imagine you can help enable them with the right equipment, kind of standardized equipment. So they're a little bit interchangeable and perhaps I'd recommend some training. So they have the same capabilities in California that you do in New York. That's right. And I think it's also important to understand that US Northern command for your listeners who don't know has recently been identified by an executive order through the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff to serve as what we call the Homeland synchronizer for small UAS defense. In the way that Northern command is operationalizing this mission is twofold. On the one hand, they have established what they call a conference, you know, form phone call. And this is nothing more time we would know in a job, a joint operation center, bringing people up to speed very quickly, right? But it's at the unclassified level. So you can fold in SLTT, the state local tribal and territorial considerations. On the other hand, they're talking about flyaway kits, right? So a package of capability with the rest of the training that could deploy very rapidly to the point of need, right? And augment installations that feel like they need a little bit of help. Okay, Paul, you have also have an extensive background studying artificial intelligence and published about it quite a bit. Do you see artificial intelligence playing a large role in the counter UAS fight? And if so, how? Yeah, I do in the future. I mean, you know my work and I'm pretty objective in terms of what we mean when we say AI enabled warfare, especially over time. And so although I think there probably is a place for so-called laws, lethal autonomous weapons systems, killer robots, whatever you want to call it, four counter drone operations in the future, I think where it's most reasonable to consider the implications of AI is in terms of command and control and in terms of intelligence, right? And so these very fundamental war fighting functions that don't get much fanfare, but are extremely integral to success on the battlefield, both offensively and defensively. And so one example could be something like the Maven smart system, which we've talked about in class year before, time with our announcements on the podcast as well, right? Provides for the intelligence war fighting function to reduce sort of the human labor, connect the dots more quickly, enhance critical thinking in support of course of action generation, right? I think the same thing as a domain to counter drone operations at home and abroad. Right now what we have is FAT-C2 is a synchronizing software for integrated air missile defense of which counter drone operations. That acronym FAT-C2 is the Ford area air defense command control system. And this is the software that allows for, as I said, synchronization of integrated air missile defense of which counter drone operations are a piece of. And the reason that the JCO has deferred to that platform at this point in time at least an encouraged development of AI technologies is because it's not just about counter drone operations, right? Technically it's also about de-conflicting fires operationally shaping fires and then strategic fires through things like FAT or Patriot. And so theater sort of missiles that would protect our allies and partners. And then furthermore and potentially most importantly is that works across the joint services, right? And so it allows for connectivity communication with the Navy and the Air Force just the same as it does with the Army. Yeah, I think these are moving so fast that it just makes sense to employ technology, right, to enhance the enhance the human. It may not even be AI. It's just some advanced advanced technologies to keep up with the pace of hundreds of drones coming at you, right? And just all the intel coming in is such a rapid pace. By the way, I mean data feeds. That's right. And by the way, the Army is, you know, we've taught here before and I think the chief of staff was just here. I think the Secretary of Defense was just here. In the Army transformation initiative has talked about the backbone of that being transformation contact brigades, right? So you've talked about 10th mountain, the 25th, the 101st. Those organizations attempting to buy, try, refine capability, right, to do the things we've talked about, to get new software into Soldiers Hands quickly to pace the threat. Now, you mentioned Dr. Nerler. I want to come back to that because with any new technology, we always talk about the .mil PFP, right? Because technology is only as good as its integration into the force. It's not necessarily the side that has the best tank as much as it is the side that incorporates that tank best into its system of fighting that that ultimately will prevail. By the .mil PF, just for our listeners, I mean, doctrine organization, training, material, leadership and education, personnel, facilities and policy. Now, I'm confident you could talk about this topic for about two hours. So what I will ask is that you just highlight what do you think are the most important elements that the JCO is working on? Where are you contributing most to the integration of the small UIS technology? Yeah, this is such a large question. In fact, I think it's fundamental for the JCO because we're about sustainability of operations over time. So let me just talk briefly about the doctrine. The only thing I want to talk briefly about the training because we've talked to already materials, sort of solutions. I'd like to talk about the sort of leadership as well briefly and then policies, right? So as we talk about doctrine, I think it bears repeating that there is no panacea or silver bullet for drones, counter drone operations that is both deployed and at home, which means that our operational concepts, that which guides the employment of capability over time and space and at time of need are really important to get right, which is why I think that layer defense is something that people should take away from this podcast. When we shift over and we talk about training, this is really important because soldiers at that level are inconsistently applying capability because they're either one not adequately trained if they're trained at all. And then two, at the military base level, there's confusing surrounding when we can actually employ a counter drone capability, even if it's nonlethal. Because although we have U.S. statute, we can talk about that here in a second, we also have U.S. Department of Defense policy that frankly confuses the issue with the predicate of engagement now being physical threat. Well, if I as an enemy disrupts 35 F-22 Raptors, a joint-based lonely used is that has strategic implications for homeland defense, is that not predicate enough for engaging in drones? So that we have some work to do to train out soldiers on the left and right limits, literally about when they can engage these capabilities. When we start talking about leadership, I think the same thing is true of our garrison commanders. Now there is a little bit different because they won't necessarily pull the trigger per say for a counter drone capability, but what they will do, importantly, is set the conditions to give ourselves the ability to engage these drones in the first place. And so you may have heard before, and if you're having, you should be aware, the listeners, that is, of 130i sort of compliance. And this is U.S. Code Section 130i, title 10, that talks about the actual right legally to engage capability. That requires a fairly lengthy packet development process at the installation level that works through the joint staff, the Office of Secretary of Defense for Policy, and it also gets broad concurrence from the FAA. So we have to train our soldiers how to do that, what are we doing to do that? We've got videos, we've got training courses, we've even talking about NTT's mobile training teams down the installation level across the joint force. And then finally, as a policies and authorities, and again, we could spend hours here, but suffice it to say, we are really leading the effort in terms of these tabletop exercises to give senior leaders primarily general Stuart and general Mingus the ability to weigh in on important conversations and important decisions. I've talked about some of these for legislation, right? Point of sale, registration, for instance, or require new legislation. How do we define an aircraft as a man versus unmaned? Because of our tabletop exercise, we now have representatives in the U.S. Congress who are talking about new laws, right? And finally is the U.S. Department of Defense does have to work in concert with the FAA to preserve what we call the national airspace. This is clear, but there's also instances where because of that coordination and JBLI, joint-based Langley, used this a couple years ago, is a great example of this. We knew those drones are flying there for weeks, but we were paralyzed by a decision because of unclear sort of policies and authorities. And so we really have to find what the DOD's obligation is in coordinating with the FAA in certain conditions for high-end jamming in the homeland. These sort of things, I think, that deal with policies and authorities of what the JCO can provide insight on. I think that's great. And just the impetus to have those tabletop exercises and those war games. We've talked a lot about them on this podcast. We do that here at the War College, having someone like you in there to say, "Hey, to run those tabletop exercises, bring the parties together to see these things." Because until you bring it together and you play it out in a game, it's hard to just visualize it. That's right. It's kind of like good. We've got a couple minutes. I mean, this is why FFRDCs, federally funded research sort of organizations are really important in terms of deep and over time learning. This could not have been possible without the partnership with Rand, who's got expertise to facilitate these conversations. We're doing the same thing when it comes to trying to determine the number, the appropriate number of flyaway kits for Northcom, right? And more importantly, where they should be placed across the United States to maximize coverage and response on this. And I think those two things, number and responsiveness are related. Well, Paul, this has been an enlightening conversation, but the sand and hour, hourglass has run out and it was in the studio and we literally have an hourglass here when I say that. So, but I want to thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Paula Shanko, for joining us on a Better Peace, the War and Podcast and for your continued work with the Army War College. 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 Peace and please take the time to review and rate this podcast as it helps get the word out to other interested listeners. From the War Room, 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 web page at warroom.armywarcollege.edu and have a great day.