John Ferrari and Dillon Prochnicki detail a current challenge for American national defense.
Operation Spiderweb demonstrated that locally launched drones can impose strategic costs far behind the front lines. Ukraine’s targeting of the Russian navy’s Black Sea Fleet has left that entity impotent.
What has yet to be demonstrated is the scale of attacks and coordination our hypothetical imagines. But with advances in artificial intelligence and AI-enabled warfare, we shouldn’t expect present barriers to stand for long. One story of the past roughly four years—since the launch of ChatGPT and the Russian invasion of Ukraine—is that claims on the limits of technology age poorly.
Those in the US national security ecosystem awoke en masse to the dangers of AI-enabled cyberattacks of unprecedented breadth and depth with Anthropic’s Mythos large language models. A small nucleus had seen the threat horizon, but the system had to be spooked by the capability’s arrival. In the case of drones, the capabilities exist. The United States cannot wait to be spooked by proof that drones can be used. Instead, the US should treat isolated incursions as evidence of a larger vulnerability before an adversary combines them into a coordinated attack. …
… The US government has begun to respond. The president signed Executive Order (EO) 14305 in June 2025. EO 14305 established a White House task force, directed that a national counter–unmanned aircraft system (UAS) training center be stood up, and called for grants and guidance for state and local detection. Then, in August 2025, Secretary Pete Hegseth replaced the Joint Counter-Small UAS Office with Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401), reporting directly to the deputy secretary and with the authority to approve up to $50 million per counter-UAS effort. And the Pentagon’s fiscal year (FY) 2027 request includes $20.6 billion for counter-UAS efforts.
Congress has also begun to address this issue set, providing $500 million for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Counter-UAS Grant Program.
