Drone defenses will need to act first, ask later, commander says
“We will push the boundaries on that, because we have to,” Lt. Gen. Gainey said.
Patrick Tucker | August 6, 2025
HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—Future AI-enabled drone and missile defenses will need to not only rapidly detect large numbers of drones and missiles, but also be accurate and trustworthy enough to take them out without having to involve a human, the head of the Pentagon’s joint missile defense command said Tuesday.
“The ability to accurately discriminate the threat, positively ID the threat, and then have the system auto-select the right interceptor or non-kinetic capability to defeat the threat is where we would definitely like to go,” Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, the head of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, said Tuesday at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium here. “We will push the boundaries on that, because we have to.”
Recent interactions in the Middle East, plus Russia’s relentless assault on Ukraine, have shown that even smaller adversaries like Iran are able to quickly produce ever-larger swarms of drones, in addition to other missiles. While U.S. forces have shown that they can handle the current volume of threats, they are increasingly relying on expensive missiles to do so.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2025/08/future-ai-drone-defenses-will-need-act-first-ask-later-commander-says/407248/?oref=d1-homepage-river
