An apparent drone swarm near a US Air Force base unveiled numerous vulnerabilities in homeland air defense.

Amid the raging conflict in the Middle East, the astonishing events at Barksdale Air Force Base earlier this month have attracted only limited media attention. It is reported that swarms of unidentified drones repeatedly loitered over Barksdale between March 9 and 15, drawing no publicly known effective response from the military or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

Barksdale is the headquarters of the Air Force’s Global Strike Command, which is responsible for the nation’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bomber forces, including B2, B1, and B52 aircraft. The base is home to the 2nd Bomb Wing B52s and is the central hub of communications and logistical support for coordinating and directing those forces. The fact that potentially threatening drones were able to operate over such a critical complex with apparent impunity over several days, after a similar event, spanning 17 days, occurred more than two years ago at Langley AFB, is astonishing. Reports indicate that Barksdale personnel were repeatedly ordered to take cover as drones roamed over buildings and aircraft. 

That there was no reported effective response to that incursion comes as no surprise to those who have been calling for an overhaul of how the US homeland is protected. The truth is that homeland defense today remains largely centered on deterring nuclear threats, such as ballistic missiles and bombers, flying over northern polar regions, launching ordinance into North America. Decades ago, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM) were organized primarily to deter a strategic attack utilizing weapons of mass destruction. Protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the homeland was widely regarded as invulnerable to non-strategic threats. 

Beginning first with 9/11, and now with the advent of unmanned aerial systems (UAS)—including military-style drones, and such long-range precision weapons as cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles launched from space, air, land, sea, and subsea—that comfortable “safe haven” assumption no longer holds. What happened at Barksdale is not an anomaly but a forerunner of a new era in warfare. Defense of the homeland has become, and will continue to be, a far more complex challenge.

At Barksdale, as at Langley AFB, the government apparently lacked effective technology to identify and counter the drones. Even if counter-UAS capabilities (C-UAS) were available, a decision to use them was likely complicated by concern over potential collateral injury to military personnel and civilians, and property damage. Some reports indicate that Barksdale attempted to employ C-UAS jamming, but without success. The inability to jam could indicate that Barksdale was facing a threat with autonomous or effective anti-jamming capabilities. If accurate, this would suggest that a sophisticated foreign actor was behind the incursion rather than a drone hobbyist.

For example, in February of this year, US Customs and Border Protection used a Department of Defense-provided high-energy laser to engage what they believed were hostile drug cartel drones operating near Fort Bliss, close to the Mexican border. That led to controversy. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), part of the Department of Transportation, decided that the use of a laser made it necessary to issue an emergency order shutting down air traffic over El Paso below 18,000 feet for 10 days, citing unexplained“special security reasons,” and declaring the area to be a national defense airspace. 

Further complicating the picture is that Washington has not clarified responsibility and authority over UAS policy on dealing with and countering drones. For a national-level response to a strategic attack, NORAD and NORTHCOM have elaborate, well-known, detailed decision-making protocols for the National Command Authority. The decision-making chain is clearly established, reaching all the way to the president. It is designed to operate within minutes. The decision-making process today for responding to a UAS threat or another kind of conventional attack is murkier and nowhere near as settled, often involving several cabinet departments. The military is not even necessarily responsible for taking the lead.

The agency warned that aircraft entering the restricted space could be shot down. After a few hours, the White House, which had not been consulted, intervened and rescinded the no-fly order. Washington said that the threat turned out to be party balloons, not hostile drones. News reports said that there had been wrangling between the FAA, the Pentagon, and Homeland Security over the appropriate use of a laser in an area with heavy commercial air traffic. 

The El Paso experience highlights important governance issues regarding how emerging threats, such as drones and UAS, should be managed. In addition to the Pentagon, the Department of Transportation, DHS, and the FBI also play a role in such situations, as do other intelligence agencies. 

As the United States comes to grips with the reality that the homeland is not immune to potential military-style drone, missile, cyber, and other non-nuclear threats, it must re-evaluate comprehensively its approach to deal with such situations on a real-time basis. Kinetic and non-kinetic tools must be swiftly introduced at strategic, critical military and civilian infrastructure locations. The decision-making apparatus necessary to identify and to respond to such threats must also be modernized and streamlined.

The bottom line is that the United States must move forward aggressively to address these new UAS threats and others emerging in the homeland. Legacy approaches defined by stove-piped responsibilities and authorities no longer work. That antiquated framework must be promptly replaced by a collaborative, integrated architectural network that enables fused domain awareness and real-time collaboration among key decision-makers. Joint Interagency Task Force 401 is a solid first step in this direction, helping propel such a reorganization. It calls for full support from all agency stakeholders. That task force should be urgently empowered at the White House level to address policy and capability gaps swiftly.

About the Authors: Glen VanHerck and Ramon Marks

General Glen VanHerck is a retired US Air Force general. At the time of his retirement, he served as commander of NORTHCOM and NORAD. He previously served as director of the Joint Staff. He currently serves as a board director and advisor across multiple industry sectors, including serving as a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.