Mackenzie Eaglen, Brady Africk
Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at The American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Brady Africk is deputy director of media relations and data design at AEI.
Ukraine just pulled off a history-making attack on Russia, and it should be a wake-up call for the United States. Using drones launched from shipping containers on the back of trucks, Ukraine guided explosives into Russian bombers across multiple airfields. These strikes included the assembly of drones by Kyiv’s covert operatives within Russia. The drones, dispersed by apparently unwitting drivers, then rose from their hiding places to strike separate bases across Russia, ranging from hundreds to thousands of kilometers from the front line.
It’s the kind of attack defense experts have been warning about for years. Countries like Iran, China, and North Korea boast about their container-borne attack drones and missiles, and Amazon even holds a patent on a commercial delivery drone system using containers.
But now, Ukraine has proven the concept can be devastating on the battlefield. As drones become more common, the United States should ensure our defense keeps pace with these threats and our offense can be as creative as Ukraine’s.
Defending against these attacks is a complex challenge, even though a US law allows the Pentagon to seize potentially harmful drones above military bases and in other restricted airspace. Part of the problem is scope. The United States sees more than 13 million containers arrive by ship and rail each year, and similarly keeps many of its aircraft out in the open at air bases across the nation and abroad. Successfully safeguarding large military assets like planes requires detecting threats early and having the ability to rapidly confront, stifle, or mislead attacks. This might include everything from dispersing aircraft across bases to hardening the hangars that house them and deploying a suite of counter-drone capabilities ranging from lasers to guns.
In the wake of Kyiv’s latest attack on Russia’s air bases, however, three priorities stand out. America should adapt on-the-ground protection at our airfields, expand counter-drone crews and their kit, and learn directly from Ukrainian instructors.
First, we should build more hardened aircraft shelters. These structures put a physical barrier between planes and munitions that could target them. Weapons exist that can hit planes tucked away within closed shelters, but they are expensive bunker-buster bombs and powerful missiles, not the consumer-grade drones used by Ukraine in their latest attack.
Russia’s low number of aircraft shelters was a vulnerability noted for years, and satellite imagery shows how Moscow only recently ramped up the construction of shelters. In this way, Ukraine’s weekend strike on Russia’s bombers was not only tactically innovative but also well-timed to take advantage of planes that Russia has not yet protected. Indeed, many of Russia’s new shelters have been constructed at air bases closer to Ukraine, in the belief that the central threat posed to them was from one-way attack drones launched from Ukrainian territory. This latest operation proved a new reality: attacks can come from almost anywhere – even from within Russia’s borders. China, which can itself produce millions of drones each year, has likewise constructed new rows of shelters at several bases.
Beyond new shelters, we should also expand counter-drone crews at American airbases across the US (and abroad) and update the technology they carry. The US military trains on tactics and systems to counter drones, but the field is moving quickly. Many counter-drone crews rely on systems like short-range air defenses, shotguns, and electronic jammers. But today’s drone threats demand more adaptability. Miles of fiber-optic cable can make drones unjammable, and massive swarms can complicate an air defense system or a shotgun-wielding soldier’s ability to respond.
In Ukraine, for example, drones that take down other drones are becoming a potent weapon. Nimble and less expensive than a missile, these systems ram into enemy drones, or deploy obstacles like nets. This concept is not entirely new but is now battlefield-tested. Every day, Ukraine and Russia take down each other’s drones with these highly flexible systems, and it’s time the US develops and deploys them too.
To this end, Capitol Hill is trying to help the armed forces catch up to a new world. Congress has been approving more flexible spending for wicked problems like counter-drone and electronic warfare. The reconciliation bill moving through Congress also contains several billion dollars for autonomous kamikaze drones, land and ship-based counter-drone capabilities, shoulder-fired air defenses for the Army, and expansion of the drone industrial base.
To maximize effective investment on an operational challenge like the threat from drones, where the technology is constantly shifting and improving, American officials should ask the Ukrainians for help. The military needs professional advice on how an adversary would plan this kind of attack and what we should do to guard against it. The US often trains with other militaries to gain experience in different forms of warfare, and Ukraine has previously sent specialists to train forces in the United Kingdom on drone tactics. While the Trump administration has been hesitant to donate aid to Ukraine, this form of collaboration would be a way for the US to bolster homeland security and offer Kyiv a path to more support.
Still, senior leaders should be honest about how difficult it can be to defend against every kind of attack. Our aim should be to build a military large and formidable enough to deter adversaries from attacking in the first place, but still versatile enough to confront those who try anyway. Washington cannot, and should not, reorient the military’s entire investment portfolio every time a new threat is demonstrated on the battlefield. The drone challenge is real and dangerous, but it is not the only threat we face.
Operations like Ukraine’s Spiderweb are, above all, a reminder that America’s military should strive to be more flexible in its planning and investments. Our armed forces should also train to be similarly creative on the battlefield, in case America needs to employ its own operation of this kind one day. To succeed against a fast-changing capability like drones, and whatever battlefield tech comes next, America needs affordable mass and thoughtful foresight.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
