In March 2025, the U.S. authorities performed a wargame on easy methods to defend army bases in the USA from drone assaults.
Simply three months later, what had appeared a theoretical risk grew to become frighteningly near actuality. In June 2025 got here Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb. Ukrainian brokers had spent months smuggling tons of of drones deep inside Russia. In a coordinated strike, greater than 100 small drones destroyed 20 to 40 Russian warplanes on 5 airbases scattered from Moscow to Siberia.
The injury prolonged to greater than Russian airpower or the Kremlin’s delight. The drone’s-eye movies of burning bombers despatched a chilling sign to nations around the globe. If this might occur to Russia, then it may occur to any nation — together with the USA.
Since 2022, the U.S. Military’s Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Plane Programs Workplace, or JCO, and the RAND Corp. suppose tank have held six wargames on easy methods to mitigate the drone menace.
“We try to grasp the insurance policies and authorities we’ve in place to stop us from contending with a situation like Operation Spiderweb,” stated Paul Lushenko, an assistant professor on the U.S. Military Struggle Faculty who helped run the drone wargame.
Most of the particulars of those wargames are categorized, however one key discovering is that defending home U.S. bases can’t be simply the army’s job.
“The tabletop train emphasised the necessity for a framework to combine, allow, and synchronize state, native, tribal, and territorial authorities into counter-drone operations at or close to army bases,” famous an essay by the sport’s designers. However this, in flip, raises a slew of jurisdictional and communication points.
By itself, Operation Spiderweb would have been an disagreeable reminder that the arrival of small, simply transportable drones implies that even installations 1000’s of miles from the battlefield aren’t secure. That is very true for the U.S., which has been protected for hundreds of years by two oceans and the absence of any vital adversary on its borders. Till lately, army bases had extra to worry from terrorists or a crazed gunman crashing the gate, slightly than a gaggle of small assault drones executing a miniature airstrike.
However, in actual fact, there have additionally been omens for years that drones have been changing into a menace to U.S. installations. In 2016, using small weaponized drones by the Islamic State in Iraq made some American commanders uneasy. Then, in 2023, got here a wave of mysterious drones that overflew Langley Air Pressure Base, inflicting no injury however producing a lot buzz about probably hostile unmanned aerial autos in U.S. airspace. The U.S. authorities estimates that there have been 350 drone incursions over army installations in 2024. Whereas most got here from careless or curious drone fans, the potential for hostile reconnaissance or assault is there.
Initially, the JCO/RAND wargames targeted on the technical challenges of counter-drone protection. However the March 2025 train tackled a way more advanced query: Who precisely has the accountability — and the authority — for defending bases from drones?
“Let’s say you’ve obtained a drone flying down the Potomac,” stated Christopher Pernin, a RAND researcher who helped run the drone wargames. “Possibly the FAA has signed off that the drone is permitted to fly. Effectively, how can the folks on the Pentagon know? They must interrogate the system and look it up. Effectively, guess what? You’ve obtained 67 seconds to determine this out.”
Particularly, the March wargame explored the circumstances below which U.S. Northern Command — which is already answerable for securing North American airspace — would coordinate counter-drone protection of army bases. The train additionally explored how the joint army providers and authorities companies can maximize information sharing and situational consciousness, in addition to easy methods to foster using counter-drone applied sciences similar to jamming GPS indicators.
Utilizing Fort Bliss, Texas, and Joint Base Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, because the targets, the tabletop sport included eventualities the place the defender confronted assaults by drones launched at numerous altitudes, bearings and distances. This served as a backdrop to stimulate discussions by over 100 individuals from greater than 30 federal and state companies in what Lushenko described as “the most important interagency tabletop train in 5 years.”
The wargame recognized three circumstances below which NORTHCOM may assist anti-drone protection of homeland bases.
“These embody drone incursions that overwhelm the natural defensive capabilities of the providers; are concurrently performed at totally different army bases, particularly these performing important missions; and, undermine public belief within the army and authorities,” the RAND essay stated.
The train additionally endorsed the thought of NORTHCOM’s “flyaway kits,” which include cell counter-drone techniques and skilled personnel that may be deployed through business plane as wanted. Nonetheless, these kits can do greater than complement what ideally could be a multilayered protection at army installations, together with jamming, microwave and laser weapons and kinetic weapons similar to machine weapons.
Apparently, the wargames steered that the Nationwide Guard may play a vital function in defending homeland army installations. Particularly helpful could be the Nationwide Guard’s Civil Assist Groups, which can be found 24/7, could be deployed with 90 minutes and “have giant budgets that may offset the equipping and coaching prices for counter-drone operations,” the RAND essay famous.
“There are some imaginative issues we are able to do to additional optimize our state-based army, by the Nationwide Guard, to reply to these drone incursions,” Lushenko added.
The protection of army bases is as a lot a matter of regulation as it’s a matter of expertise. For instance, per Part 130i below Title 10 of the U.S. Code, the commanders of some bases are licensed to make use of pressure towards drone intrusions, whereas others may face prosecution.
Compounding the issue is that with round 500 army installations across the U.S, there are a hodgepodge of various guidelines of engagement. At some websites, the directions from commanders are “‘no drones on my set up, you have got carte blanche to do no matter you want,’” stated Pernin.
“They know precisely what they’re doing and so they know what their targets are. I believe there are numerous locations that don’t have that form of objective setting. They see a UAV flying on the opposite aspect of the set up, and so they suppose, ‘I’m undecided if I ought to take it out or simply let it go.’”
In the end, the drone wargames have been helpful just by bringing collectively folks from totally different companies.
“We had numerous crosstalk that I don’t suppose had occurred earlier than,” Pernin recalled. “We had numerous events the place folks stated, ‘I believe that is so-and-so’s function.’ However that individual was within the room, and they’d say, ‘no, it’s not ours.’”
