2021 Is the Year the Small Drone Arms Race Heats Up
The cat-and-mouse of drone defense and offense is entering a new phase.
By Patrick Tucker
Technology Editor
January 26, 2021
As drones become smarter, cheaper, more nimble, easier for rogue adversaries to acquire and more advanced adversaries to evolve, they pose a unique threat for the U.S. military that grows in importance as the objects themselves diminish in size. This year, trends in autonomy will reshape drone capabilities and concepts, making them more offensively useful and even harder to defend against.
“Drones and most likely drone swarms are something you’re going to see on a future battlefield...I think we’re already seeing some of it,†said Army Gen. John Murray, who leads Army Futures Command. “Counter drone, we’re working the same path everybody else is working in terms of soft skills and hard kills via a variety of different weapons systems. It just becomes very hard when you start talking about swarms of small drones. Not impossible but harder.â€
The U.S. military plans to spend $83 million this year to buy lasers, electromagnetic devices, and other means to take down small drones. By year’s end, the destroyer Preble will get a 60-kilowatt laser and an optical dazzler, while the Air Force will deploy a Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder, or THOR. But the Pentagon will spend $404 million — almost four times as much — to develop new anti-drone defenses, the Congressional Research Service reported Jan. 11.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/01/2021-year-small-drone-arms-race-heats/171650/
