Guest post: “How to Protect the United States Against Drones: Why Securing the Sky is Not Enough”
Drones have been the center of much discussion among security experts, and there are lots of ideas as to how to address them. Today we have a very thoughtful essay by Lt Col (Dr.) Paul Lushenko and Maj (Dr.) Joseph Amoroso, stategists with Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) 401, to help chart the way ahead. Speaking in their personal capacities, these experts offer a practical and realistic assessment. Here’s a sampling from their post:
Purchasing new hardware to interdict drones, which analysts often emphasize, is not enough to secure the sky. Rather, sustainable homeland defense against drones requires the adoption of protection principles, applicable to all vulnerable sites (military or otherwise), as well as an alignment of policies and authorities that reduce legal and jurisdictional friction across the U.S. military, federal agencies and departments, and local law enforcement.
This is definitely one you’ll want to read!
How to Protect the United States Against Drones: Why Securing the Sky is Not Enough
by Paul Lushenko and Joseph Amoroso
On February 28, 2026, the U.S. military launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. The massive air campaign was designed to deter Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Tehran’s response was predictable, informed by its strategic approach. The Iranian military launched thousands of ballistic missiles and Shahed-136 drones across the Middle East with the intent to regionalize the conflict and undermine U.S. resolve.
One of these salvos, launched on March 1, 2026, against a U.S. command center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, killed six U.S. soldiers. Analysts seized on this moment to proclaim a “new era in drone warfare.”
Drones also increasingly threaten the U.S. homeland. In December 2023, dozens of drones disrupted operations at Joint Base Langley-Eustis (JBLE) in Virginia, forcing the relocation of F-22 Raptor jets responsible for defending the homeland. Following this incursion, New Jersey experienced “mysterious” drone sightings in late 2024.
These sightings were characteristic of the several hundred detections in 2024 at over 100 military bases. More recently, in March 2026, there were multiple reports of drones operating over sensitive flight line areas at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, prompting a temporary shelter-in-place order.
These incidents suggest a broader trend. The threat of drones is no longer confined to distant battlefields. According to Air Force General Gregory Guillot, Commander of U.S. Northern Command, a staggering rise in drone use represents “a safety and security risk to military and other critical infrastructure.”
Together, these incidents raise concerns about the magnitude of effort required from the Department of War to defend U.S. military bases and critical infrastructure from drones and support the protection of mass gatherings of Americans. From 2021 to 2024, for example, reported drone incursions at NFL football stadiums nearly doubled from 1,300 to 2,300 per year.
Though policymakers, military leaders, and defense analysts recognize the challenge of defending the homeland against drones, they continue to debate the best approach. In a recent Foreign Affairs article, Theodore Bunzel and Tom Donilon emphasize the need for more study of the drone threat, better countermeasures, and expanded airspace control.
These are sensible recommendations, and it is hard to disagree with them. Yet we argue that these recommendations fall short for several reasons that are informed by our assignment with the U.S. military’s Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) 401, which was recently established to help counter the drone threat.
As strategists with JIATF 401, we have a vested interest in the success of this organization, considering the implications for homeland defense. We have also practiced and studied drone warfare for decades, including efforts to counter drones. Here, we offer insights on the evolving drone threat that advance beyond Bunzel and Donilon’s argument.
First, Bunzel and Donilon risk reinforcing incremental study at a moment that demands operational urgency. Similarly, they risk emphasizing hardware solutions at the expense of their integration under a common command and control, which is crucial for layered defense against drones.
Third, Bunzel and Donilon do not sufficiently account for ongoing initiatives to address the evolving drone threat, especially legal and jurisdictional measures that help to balance security of the national airspace with Americans’ right to fly drones for commercial and recreational purposes.
To be fair, Bunzel and Donilon published their analysis in December 2025, before some of these initiatives started, including those led by the task force. Finally, they conflate a tailored approach to protecting against drones in the homeland with a “comprehensive drone defense,” which distorts key principles emphasized by JIATF 401 that offer a more sensible and sustainable way to meet the drone threat.
The Liability of More Study
Bunzel and Donilon recommend that the U.S. Congress convene a “blue-ribbon” commission to study the drone threat with the outcome of strengthening the United States’ counter-drone posture. They argue that the “commission should be small, with no more than five members and a well-resourced staff working in both classified and unclassified dimensions, and it should be charged with delivering concrete recommendations in 12 months.”
Though this recommendation seems reasonable, the commission’s time horizon is mismatched to the evolving drone threat, which imposes immediate risks to the homeland. More study by a commission may refine understanding of supply chains that enable dual-use drones, or those that can perform both commercial and military functions.
But the operational features of the drone threat to the homeland are already clear. Ironically, Bunzel and Donilon also recognize the urgency of the drone threat in the homeland. They contend that the “drone threat is no longer theoretical.” Rather, they argue “it is here, it is accelerating, and will only grow more challenging.”
The Department of War, federal agencies and departments, and local law enforcement understand the drone threat well enough to act now. Conditioning their response on yet another study and report, when so many already exist, imposes an unnecessary liability for homeland defense against drones.
Indeed, U.S. Air Force General Glen VanHerck, who retired after commanding the U.S. Northern Command, recently argued that small drones “are operating with impunity as tools of espionage, criminal activity, and even state-sponsored probing.”
The 2023 incident at JBLE is a prime example. But others exist as well. Mexican drug cartels, for instance, have weaponized small drones in ways that reflect best practices from the war in Ukraine.
In October 2025, three drones attacked a prosecutor’s office in Tijuana, a major crossing point between Mexico and the United States and a thoroughfare for drug-smuggling. It is only a matter of time until drones operated by Mexican drug cartels are turned against soldiers, federal agents, and law enforcement deployed along the U.S. southern border.
There is No Silver Bullet Against Drones
Bunzel and Donilon also criticize the Department of War’s laborious acquisition processes that have undermined its ability to outpace the drone threat. To contend with this challenge, they imply the need for new acquisition processes that will allow the Department of War to rapidly scale counter-drone capabilities.
According to Bunzel and Donilon, the Department of War should procure counter-drone solutions in months, not years, and at far lower costs. This would bend the cost-exchange ratio; the U.S. military spends millions of dollars to intercept drones that cost a fraction of the price.
This argument reflects the position of many other drone warfare experts. Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia Macdonald state that the U.S. military risks losing the drone war because it prioritizes expensive and exquisite systems over cheaper and adaptable ones, which have been used effectively by Azerbaijan, Israel, Russia, and Ukraine. Stacie Pettyjohn and Molly Campbell lodge a similar claim, as do Michael Horowitz and Eric Lin-Greenberg. Lin-Greenberg argues “lower-cost yet capable anti-drone systems will prove increasingly necessary.”
While hardware is necessary to defend the homeland against drones, it is insufficient. In their recent book on drones, Sarah Kreps and James Patton Rogers explain that countering drones “is a cat-and-mouse game, one that will not be won by a single ‘panacea’ counter-technology.”
Rather, the intent should be to offer a range of capabilities that, when enabled by the right data, software, training, authorities, and sustainment, and uniquely configured within different operating environments, provide layered defense against drones.
This approach integrates both non-kinetic and kinetic capabilities against drones, ranging from physical protection measures, such as hardening, to more kinetic options, such as cheap missiles. In the homeland, layered defense is conditioned by “low collateral defeat” effects, such as high-powered microwaves, jamming, and other drones. These fry a drone’s avionics, deny the radio frequencies that enable its flight, or knock it out of the sky.
Together, these techniques reduce risks to civilians and their property, and research shows these considerations are important to Americans. Furthermore, recent joint testing between the Department of War and the Federal Aviation Administration demonstrates that when properly coordinated, these new technologies do not pose undue risk to passenger aircraft, making them the type of low collateral defeat capabilities that Americans endorse.
What Matters is Unity of Effort
Countering drones in the homeland is not only a technical and technological challenge for the U.S. military to address at bases, installations, and defense critical infrastructure. It is also an organizational and bureaucratic challenge that requires greater unity of effort across federal agencies and departments, as well as state and local law enforcement.
An integrated approach is crucial to align laws, policies, and jurisdictional oversight that preserves Americans’ right to fly drones in ways that do not impose risks on national security, or on commercial and hobbyist air traffic.
Aside from the liability of time, Bunzel and Donilon’s recommendation for a “blue-ribbon” commission is duplicative of steps the Department of War has already taken to align federal agencies and departments, as well as state and local law enforcement, against the threat of drones in the homeland.
In August 2025, the Department of War established JIATF 401 to address the threat of drones, offering a way to shape a whole-of-government approach to defend the homeland against drones. VanHerck affirms that “JIATF 401 should sit at the center as the integrator, setting common standards, accelerating testing and evaluation, and driving rapid fielding pathways across a diverse interagency mission.”
The task force’s mission is to synchronize the Department of War’s counter-drone efforts to rapidly deliver joint capabilities at scale to protect U.S. and allied forces and assist federal agencies and departments in defending critical infrastructure and the homeland.
The task force aligns counter-drone research, development, procurement, and evaluation efforts around risk-informed assessments of likely threats and vulnerable assets. Many of its initiatives within the Department of War have implications for federal agencies and departments, as well as state, local, tribal, and territorial authorities.
In many ways, the task force was designed to address the integration, coordination, and capability gaps that policymakers have identified for years, including those emphasized by Bunzel and Donilon.
The task force has aligned its whole-of-government approach around several efforts that are integral to protecting against the drone threat and maintaining America’s airspace sovereignty. Less than nine months since its establishment, these efforts reflect a deliberate shift toward implementing cost-effective and tailorable counter-drone solutions.
First, the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act strengthened authorities and directed greater coordination across federal agencies and departments, reinforcing JIATF 401’s role in synchronizing counter-drone efforts.
The legislation also enhances the ability of state and local authorities, pending certification from the Department of Justice, to interdict drones at public gatherings, such as sporting events. This is critical to bridging the gap between the military’s counter-drone operations at homeland defense sites and federal, state, and local authorities that have jurisdiction over civil airspace across the United States.
Additionally, the Department of War issued guidance, informed by the task force, that further empowers commanders to protect against drones while not impinging on Americans’ lawful commercial or recreational use. This guidance enables commanders to engage drones beyond the “fence line” of protected sites, including those determined to conduct unauthorized surveillance.
To do this, commanders must assess the “totality of circumstances,” which requires expanded data sharing with federal, state, and local authorities. These changes align with findings from a recent Department of War Inspector General report, which cited unclear and inconsistent policies that undermined effective counter-drone operations at certain installations. The recent clarifying guidance helped address these gaps and resolve one of the report’s key recommendations.
Second, the task force focuses on addressing integration challenges that have long limited counter-drone effectiveness at both the institutional and technical levels. It garnered early interagency support at a cabinet-level meeting hosted by the Secretary of the Army.
This endorsement paved the way for improved information sharing through liaisons and embedded partners who serve as bridging mechanisms across federal agencies and departments. For instance, the task force is working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration to streamline the notification process for counter-drone operations that may affect civilian air traffic, including commercial and hobbyist planes.
At the technical level, the task force is overcoming fragmentation in counter-drone systems through an enterprise-wide approach to common command and control. In March 2026, the Department of War awarded an $87 million contract to establish a common counter-drone command and control architecture that would allow for the seamless integration of multiple systems across the joint force and interagency.
This investment builds on lessons from “Operation Clear Horizon,” a September 2025 exercise led by the task force that revealed fragmentation across sensors, effectors, and operators. It responds to calls for greater integration and provides the foundation for layered defense by enabling operators to share data and coordinate responses across jurisdictions.
Third, the task force has accelerated acquisition timelines and expanded access to counter-drone capabilities while minimizing redundancy and wasteful spending. This includes pursuing low cost, attritable systems that can be deployed quickly and adapted to different environments.
For example, the Bumblebee interceptor, an iteration of systems proven effective in Ukraine, has progressed from requirement identification to operational testing in months rather than years. This reflects a deliberate shift toward rapid technology transfer and more agile acquisition processes, enabling the Department of War to identify promising solutions, field capabilities, and iterate based on operator feedback.
Finally, the task force is expanding access to counter-drone capabilities through the development of a centralized marketplace that enables military units, interagency partners, and now allied militaries, including the United Kingdom and Romania, to acquire solutions. Early use of the marketplace has amounted to nearly $13 million in purchases to deliver capabilities to the U.S. Southern Border and defense critical infrastructure across the homeland.
Taken together, these early initiatives tackle challenges that have been central to policy discussions for years. It is too early to assess the full effectiveness of the task force’s initiatives. Yet its actions demonstrate a sense of urgency, focus, and shared responsibility absent from previous approaches.
Shifting the Mindset from Defense to Protection
Even if the task force and its partners’ efforts succeed, they will not entirely eliminate the drone threat. Addressing this reality requires a broader shift in how policymakers approach the problem. While drone technology is relatively new, the policy challenges it presents are not. The United States has confronted similar dual-use risks before. Today, automobiles are indispensable to commerce, yet they can be weaponized to inflict harm, like terrorist groups such as the Islamic State have done.
When Henry Ford began selling the Model T automobile in the United States in the early 1900s, policymakers did not attempt to secure all roads. Instead, a policy framework matured to layer safety standards, impose requirements for operators, establish traffic laws, emplace barriers around vulnerable sites, and establish emergency response units.
As drones become integrated into daily commerce, a similar mindset must take hold. Airspace control measures are necessary components of a national response to drones. As Bunzel and Donilon suggest, these measures consist of expanding the Department of War’s coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration while interdicting drones; imposing “geofencing” requirements on drones, denying them overflight of U.S. military bases and critical infrastructure; and enforcing the remote identification of drones, which is akin to a driver’s license but for drones.
But protecting what matters from the threat of drones also requires a shift in mindset across the government and private sectors, something that Bunzel and Donilon confuse by emphasizing “comprehensive drone defense.” It is both impossible and cost prohibitive to attempt to outfit every government building, every stadium, and all critical infrastructure with the most exquisite counter-drone capabilities.
Rather, protection must be prioritized based on the criticality of an asset and the likelihood of a threat. In practice, this means aligning the most advanced, resource-intensive counter-drone capabilities to the most vital and vulnerable sites.
JIATF 401’s Domestic Shield initiative, formerly known as Replicator 2, reflects this tailored approach. Working with the military services, the task force applies the Department of War’s prioritization of defense critical infrastructure to optimize the allocation of resources to protect defense sites across the homeland.
Prioritization consequentially leaves gaps. Because not everything can be actively defended, power plants, data centers, public resources, event venues, military installations, and transportation hubs must incorporate the drone threat into security planning. This means hardening assets, obscuring their visibility from above, and extending their perimeter to anticipate likely launch and control sites. Security services must build redundancy into critical systems and rehearse response protocols.
These principles are vital to layered defense and represent the first line of defense against drones in the homeland. These principles are also critical to interdicting drones abroad, such that the U.S. military must allocate counter-drone capabilities to the lowest possible level, ensure their mobility at the forward edge of combat, and enable them to go on the offensive to look for and target drones as well as their command and control. Often, the best defense against drones is a good offense.
The Time to Act is Now
As reflected by Bunzel and Donilon’s commentary, there is no shortage of ideas for how to protect the United States from drones. There is also no shortage of money. The Department of War has invested billions of dollars in counter-drone capabilities and realigned acquisition policies to strengthen homeland defense against drones.
The challenge, then, is no longer how to diagnose the drone threat, despite Bunzel and Donilon’s recommendation. The real challenge is how to sustain momentum on encouraging counter-drone initiatives.
Purchasing new hardware to interdict drones, which analysts often emphasize, is not enough to secure the sky. Rather, sustainable homeland defense against drones requires the adoption of protection principles, applicable to all vulnerable sites (military or otherwise), as well as an alignment of policies and authorities that reduce legal and jurisdictional friction across the U.S. military, federal agencies and departments, and local law enforcement.
Initiatives advanced by JIATF 401 are critical to this effort. In response to the growing urgency of the drone threat, the task force’s whole-of-government approach has helped to update policies and authorities, facilitate information sharing, align funding for capability development, and shape joint training in ways that balance Americans’ right to operate drones with national security concerns.
But these efforts are only the beginning. With America’s shores providing no barrier against drone threats, even the most innovative countermeasures will fail without this enduring unity of effort.
About the Authors
Paul “Paulie” Lushenko is a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and serves as the Chief Strategist for the Joint Interagency Task Force 401. He is an Adjunct Professor at the U.S. Army War College and a globally recognized expert on emerging technologies and war. He widely publishes on the intersection of emerging technologies, politics, and national security, and is the author or editor of three books including The Legitimacy of Drone Warfare: Evaluating Public Perceptions (2024). Paul earned a PhD from Cornell University, where he served as a U.S. Army General Andrew Jackson Goodpaster Scholar; holds numerous master’s degrees; and, has a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy.
Joseph Amoroso is a U.S. Army Major and serves as a Strategic Analyst for the Joint Interagency Task Force 401. He served as an Assistant Professor of American Politics in the Department of Social Sciences at the U.S. Military Academy. His research focuses on American civil-military relations and political institutions. He earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from the University of Virginia, and a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy. He is a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Disclaimers
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. government, Department of War, or Department of the Army.
The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect my views or those of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, or Duke University. (See also here).
Remember what we like to say on Lawfire®: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself!
