The Drive:

The U.S. Department of Defense is exploring a range of novel concepts and weapons systems as it attempts to re-equip and retrain the armed forces for future conflicts, while also reinvigorating conventional deterrence capabilities alongside NATO and other allies. One particularly ubiquitous threat is that posed by the widespread use of small class one and two unmanned aerial systems (sUAS)—otherwise known as drones—by both non-state groups like Daesh, as well as state adversaries.

In Nagorno-Karabakh, internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and during the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, these sUAS have been used to spot and correct for indirect artillery and mortar fire for devastating effect, as well as to directly drop small munitions or crash into targets with a small warhead attached as cheap loitering munitions. This is hardly a new threat for the U.S. military and its allies, but it is one for which an affordable and effective solution which can be employed at scale has yet to be procured in the West…

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