Image: airandspaceforces.com
The Story
U.S. bases have counter-drone tools, but too few layers to shield every runway, aircraft, and logistics hub.
Overseas bases are not uniformly defenseless, yet many cannot be fully protected against cheap, numerous, low-flying drones. Recent attacks and Ukraine’s strikes on Russian airfields have accelerated efforts to layer detection, electronic warfare, guns, missiles, hardening, dispersal, and operational resilience. The central problem is capacity: the United States has defenses, but not enough of every kind for every base.
- ExposureOpen-air aircraft, soft buildings, fuel, command centers, and supply nodes are especially vulnerable when defenses or warning systems are thin.
- ResponseThe likely answer is not one wonder weapon but layered defenses combined with dispersal, hardening, camouflage, and smaller logistical footprints.
- The Army is responsible for air-base defense but lacks the capacity to protect all bases at all times; small drones increasingly threaten parked aircraft and soft buildings.
- A 2025 RAND tabletop exercise brought together more than 100 participants from over two dozen federal agencies to examine homeland counter-drone coordination and authorities.
- Congressional research identifies counter-UAS equipment, technical maturity, interagency coordination, domestic installation protection, force structure, funding, and cost as unresolved issues.
Deeper Insight
A Marine colonel admits no defense today can stop a swarm of thousands of small drones. Billion-dollar bases now hinge on cheap machines.
Ukraine's Operation Spider Web showed it: small drones launched from nearby can hit high-value aircraft parked in rows. Marine Col. Andrew Konicki says thousands at once would drain interceptors and overwhelm lasers and microwaves, and that nothing suitable exists yet. The Pentagon is hardening and dispersing bases. Power projection used to mean concentration. Now concentration is the target.
- What it could changeIf swarms beat defenses, the U.S. may have to scatter its forces abroad and give up the big-base model.
- How it touches todayCNAS, a defense think tank, warns counter-drone buying lacks the scale and urgency the threat demands.
- Our futureWar could become a contest of who can build the most cheap machines fastest.
- Marine Corps Col. Andrew Konicki said a swarm of thousands of small enemy drones could deplete kinetic interceptors and overwhelm high-energy lasers and microwaves; he acknowledged no suitable defense exists today for that threat.
- A senior former Air Force intelligence official described the next attack as potentially coming from nearby rather than across a continent, citing lessons from Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web.
- CNAS concludes that insufficient scale and urgency in counter-drone procurement could allow massed Chinese drone attacks to overwhelm distributed U.S. warfighting strategies.
Sources · 10
Featured · Analysis · cnas.org
Countering the Swarm | CNAS
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Compass Points - Swarm Response
Compass Points - Swarm Response ### A swarm of worthy articles v7.5 Marine Corps Compass Points May 03, 2025 Compass Points - Swarm Response A swarm of worthy articles v7.5 May 3, 2025 What can be done when a dangerous incoming swarm puts the Marine Corps in danger? Marine Corps Col Andrew Konicki m
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The vulnerability of US military bases to weaponized drones
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