$5 million vs $5: Getting Your Money's Worth

When you create a weapon so efficient and precise that it has been said to put “warheads on foreheads”, it can be expected that it might come back and bite you at some point.  This is exactly the position that America is finding itself in following the proliferation of the use of drones. What used to be an advantage on the side of America – a safer war from the confines of a base on American soil – has now fallen into the hands of insurgent groups.

 In an attempt to combat this, the U.S has become to roll out a number of strategies across the multiple military branches in the form of training, tools and sensors to jam or prevent unmanned aerial vehicles. Col. David Morgan, Joint C-sUAS Office Division Chief of Requirements and Capabilities has identified it to be a “systems of systems approach… there is no one silver bullet that is going to address this.”

 The introduction of this ‘system of systems’ aims to become a natural part of training so that any war fighter has both the knowledge and skills to counter an enemy drone – “any joint war fighter – any soldier, airman, or Marine – should be able to do the very basic things needed to counter a particular threat,” claims Morgan.

The defensive system not only includes a two week classroom training plan, as well as hands on experience, but also comes in the form of various tools including:

·       Frequency jammers, which interrupt the control of the drone by overwhelming the control frequency and taking over the drone’s wireless control link, giving the forces the ability to either stop the drone or have it return to the operator.

·       Smart Shooters, a fire control system which significantly increases the accuracy of small arms, and targeting aids, which allows the conventional rifles to become precise enough to hit a moving drone.  

·       Extensive use of direction finding sensors and radar and infrared cameras which are all mounted on a protected vehicle.

Throughout the development of these defences, what has been paramount is the need for all of these services to work with one another. There is a whole network of tools that all talk to each other; “we’ve put a high emphasis on command and control, to make sure that all those systems are able to talk effectively to each other,” Morgan.

Whilst shiny new tools are always very exciting and the modes of defences are certainly an impressive feat of technology, they do not come for free. In 2021, the Pentagon received $7.5 billion for the field Unmanned Systems. Of course this includes the creation and use of their own drones, but it is still no small number.

With such huge spending and advanced technology taking place, it brings to question the other side’s response to such developments.

There have been a long line of developments to challenge America’s seemingly unbeatable defences.

When America developed stronger and well equipped armoured vehicles, insurgents simply moved to improvised explosive devices. They responded to these tanks, impenetrable by gunfire, by burying repurposed artillery shells connected to mobile phones. Not only were these extremely destructive, but also showed America’s expensive technology to be bested by some repurposed shells and a $5 phone.

In response to this, America spent more; creating Warlock jammers to stop the phone signal, thus preventing the detonation. Coming to a cost of $100,000 per jammer, these were soon beaten by insurgents going even more old school, using buried wire and a triggerman at a distance.

Technology will always advance, this cannot be denied, but sometimes it must be noted that bigger does not always mean better.  Whilst anti-drone technology is a must in this changing landscape of war, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the legend of America spending millions to develop a pen that could write in space, whilst Soviet astronauts simply used a pencil.