Drone Combat: Army Piloting Pentagon's Counter-UAS Efforts.

• Author: Easley, Mikayla

Once considered an everyday, low-risk hobby, small unmanned aircraft systems have become a key capability for militaries on modern battlefields. While the availability and technology of these systems advance at a rapid pace, the Pentagon wants to take an enterprise approach to defeat the growing threat.

The Army's Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, or the JCO, is leading a department-wide effort to address how the U.S. military will combat adversaries' use of small drones both now and in the future.

Established in 2020, the office is collaborating with the services to develop and deploy multi-domain solutions through capability demonstrations, joint training plans and global partnerships.

Congress directed the Pentagon in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act to create a plan to develop and field a counter-small UAS system. The budget request for fiscal year 2023 shows the department plans to spend at least $668 million for counter-drone research and development and $78 million for procurement.

Examples of how drones are being used in real-world conflicts today, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have reinforced the Pentagon's decision to establish a joint strategy for counter-UAS, said the office's director, Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey.

"I think it's bringing more to light of what we already know--that when you scale this capability from a small quadcopter all the way up to a larger group 3 and are able to leverage [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] to put other effects of other systems to bear, it really shows the importance of having counter-UAS at scale," he said.

To create a more cohesive counter-drone effort in the department, the joint office first conducted an operational assessment of all the capabilities already fielded by each of the services.

"The services were already working on this problem set. Every service had a different capability fielded out there, mainly focused on joint, operational, urgent needs for [combatant commands]," he said during an Association of the United States Army event in August.

While it was important to quickly field capabilities to warfighters at the time in order to combat adversary drones in places like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, the varying systems were customized for each service rather than the entire joint force, he said.

The office's assessment found that when counter-UAS systems were employed as standalone capabilities, they weren't as impactful against...