A bipartisan bill introduced last month that would enable the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to begin developing policies, procedures and capabilities for countering threats posed by unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in limited circumstances in U.S. airspace hopefully will become part of the Senate’s version of an annual defense policy bill, says the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The Senate has begun consideration of the fiscal year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) says he hopes the counter-drone bill will be attached to the defense bill as a manager’s amendment.
Johnson says the Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018 (S. 2836) will provide “table stakes authority to begin the process, the complex process, of addressing this threat.” The threat stems from the use of small drones by terrorist groups and criminal organizations to drop explosives and hazardous materials, ferry drugs, and conduct surveillance against critical infrastructure and other sites.
Islamic State militants in Iraq have successfully weaponized UAS with grenades to launch air attacks against Iraqi forces with high precision, Transcriminal Organizations have used drones to smuggle drugs across U.S. borders, and the Coast Guard is seeing more UAS activity where it is performing missions, David Glawe, undersecretary of Intelligence and Analysis at DHS, tells Johnson’s committee during a hearing on the domestic counter-drone issue.
The bill proposed by Johnson and others on his committee only applies to federal authorities in limited circumstances and is seen as a first step in developing the techniques, policies and capabilities to begin to effectively counter threats from UAS in the U.S.
The threat from UAS against domestic interests is “real” and “urgent,” Glawe says, adding later that “I am confident this threat will evolve and malicious use of drones will more sophisticated.”
Scott Brunner, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, tells the panel that it’s easy to acquire UAS and that their capabilities continue to improve, yet they are hard to “disrupt and monitor,” and that the bureau is concerned about their use by criminals and terrorists.
In the past few years, the Federal Aviation Administration has registered more than one million UAS, which are frequently purchased over the counter or online.
The counter-drone bill is intended to fill an existing gap in U.S. law that prohibits domestic authorities from taking down an aircraft, manned or unmanned, that pose a threat, and from developing and testing the technologies and capabilities thwart such threats.
“Without this authority, DHS is unable to develop and deploy countermeasures to mitigate nefarious use of this technology,” Glawe says, noting that the bill is just a “first step” and doesn’t address the needs of state and local authorities and first responders who often are the first to encounter potential threats. Glawe and others at the hearing say that legal authorities will need to evolve as federal officials gain experience with counter-drone policies and capabilities and as threats evolve.
