Last year, the United States got its first real exposure to the threat of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and the reality that the U.S. is woefully incapable of handling this threat currently. The events that transpired in November/December 2024 in and around New Jersey – the drone or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) sightings – highlight the fact that, as a government, we are not prepared to mitigate an active UAS or UAV threat.
The U.S. has recognized the threat from UAS and created some regulatory structures, interagency working groups, and held a multitude of symposiums, conferences and meetings on the UAS threat. There is still no operational capability to counter UAS threats in real time. For all of their work and millions of dollars spent, we only have a limited capability to mitigate UAS threats. The biggest vulnerabilities and issues as defined during the incidents in New Jersey were:
- No real command, control and communication structure for Counter UAS (C-UAS). Who’s in charge of the mitigation, federal, state or local authorities? Who is making the decisions and who is speaking for the authorities and at what level? New Jersey demonstrated that the state government was left to handle this UAS threat, and the federal government was slow to respond and ineffective when they did. Another communication vulnerability was demonstrated by the fact the media drove this story and that increased hysteria among the population and highlighted our weakness to mitigate it.
- Inability to accurately identify and analyze UAS threats in a timely manner. As witnessed in New Jersey, there was no clear identification process for the UAS threat, and there appeared to be major disorganization among all levels of government on identifying and the analyzing the UAS systems and threat.
- Lack of C-UAS systems that are available to protect infrastructure, particularly at the non-Department of Defense (DoD) and state and local levels. There is a lack of authority to use C-UAS systems even if available. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and some other designated agencies (Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Secret Service, and the Federal Protective Service) are the only non-DoD entities that have been cleared to mitigate the UAS threat. Additionally, as this threat has not been considered imminent, there are not enough hardware systems that can be deployed to actually handle this theat. Even if they started today and selected C-UAS systems, it would take years to have sufficient numbers to protect critical infrastructure.
Forecast: The threat of UAS being used as a weapon of destruction will increase significantly in the homeland during 2025. UAS attacks have been used successfully throughout the world and our enemies have witnessed our incapacity to handle this threat. The weakness demonstrated in New Jersey in the response to the UAS threat will only encourage our adversaries to use this “cheap man’s weapon” to exploit our vulnerability. UAVs, such as drones, and UAS are now a fact we must deal with and respond to accordingly.