A nasty part of life that we don’t think about much is how vulnerable we are. Example one these days — these drones over New Jersey. We don’t seem to have any way of protecting ourselves from drone attacks.
If somebody wants to kill us, we usually can’t prevent that. If competent group wanted to kill the president, the Secret Service would likely be overwhelmed.
A guest on Mark Halperin’s show this morning discussed how we vulnerable we are to drones.
Carol Leonnig writes in this 2021 book, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service:
* [Delta Force sergeant:] “I feel sorry for you guys. The Service has really let you down. You’ll never be able to stop a real attack.”
It wasn’t the answer Gable had hoped for, and as he listened to John dissect the Service’s outdated equipment and spotty training, his stomach grew queasy. Deep down, he knew how ill – equipped and out of date the Secret Service was, but hearing it articulated by someone he respected made it impossible to deny. His mind drifted to all the times he had seen the Service drop the ball — most recently, a 2010 trip to Mumbai with President Obama, in which his unit had narrowly avoided a major international incident after nearly killing an unidentified gunman who turned out to be a local police officer. Scenarios like these were dress rehearsals for a real attack on the president, and in his five years with CAT, he had seen the Service fail so many of them.
Gable was now faced with a brutal truth: Increasingly, the Secret Service was fulfilling its Zero Fail mission based not on its skills, people, training, or technology, but on dumb luck. How long would it be before that luck ran out? Gable wasn’t alone. He knew other dedicated agents who felt a growing sense of disillusionment, especially with the agency’s leadership. But fear of repercussions had kept them silent. Until the stakes got too high.
Grok says:
Counter-drone systems face several challenges that contribute to their perceived ineffectiveness:
Rapid Evolution of Drone Technology: The commercial and military drone sectors are advancing quickly, outpacing the development of counter-drone systems. Drones are becoming smaller, smarter, and more autonomous, employing techniques like frequency-hopping to evade jamming, which complicates countermeasures. The diversity in drone types, from consumer-grade to sophisticated military drones with encrypted or autonomous capabilities, means that no single counter-drone technology can be universally effective.
Detection Challenges: Small drones are hard to detect due to their low radar cross-section, especially when flying at low altitudes or in cluttered environments. Traditional detection methods like radar, infrared, and acoustic sensors have limitations; for instance, radar might miss small, slow-moving objects, while infrared sensors struggle in high-altitude or adverse weather conditions.
Legal and Regulatory Constraints: In many jurisdictions, the use of counter-drone technologies, especially those involving jamming or kinetic actions, is highly regulated or outright banned due to potential interference with legal communications or aviation safety. This limits the deployment of effective countermeasures in civilian or shared airspace settings.
Cost vs. Benefit: The cost of deploying counter-drone systems, especially kinetic solutions like missiles, can be disproportionately high compared to the cost of the drones they aim to neutralize. This economic imbalance makes widespread deployment less feasible, especially for low-cost, high-number drone threats.
Technological Limitations: Many current systems are not designed to handle swarms or coordinated groups of drones, which can overwhelm single-target focused defenses. Furthermore, drones can employ electronic warfare tactics like jamming their own signals to evade detection or countermeasures.Operational Environment: In environments like urban areas or near critical infrastructure, the use of counter-drone measures must be carefully managed to avoid collateral damage. The presence of non-hostile drones in the same airspace also complicates the identification and engagement process.
Adaptation by Adversaries: As seen in recent conflicts, adversaries adapt their drone tactics to exploit weaknesses in counter-drone systems, such as using drones in ways where existing defenses are less effective or deploying drones with modifications to counter specific threats.Posts on X have also highlighted these issues, suggesting that small, low-flying drones can evade detection, and the high cost of countermeasures like ammunition makes them impractical for widespread use against such threats.
In summary, the effectiveness of counter-drone systems is hampered by a combination of technological, regulatory, economic, and operational challenges, making it a continually evolving field where both drone and counter-drone technologies are in a perpetual arms race.
