U.S. behind in drone technology

OPINION:

In August 1957, the Soviet Union successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile. In October of that year, it launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite.

A panic hit the United States because of the belief that the Soviets had far surpassed our missile technology. The result was “the missile gap,” and the theory (later proved incorrect) that the U.S. badly lagged behind the Soviets took hold in American politics.

We are apparently far behind many nations in drone technology. This fact is indicated by news reports and our military’s attempts to catch up to other nations, including Russia, China and Iran.

Drones can do many of the tasks soldiers perform, such as attacking cities and fuel production facilities, interfering with radar and communications and (as the Ukrainians proved) sinking ships and submarines with undersea drones. The Russians have nearly devastated Ukrainian cities with drone and missile attacks.

Iran, with Russian help, has built a factory inside Russia to provide it with more and more capable drones. Those nations are sharing their technologies, and we must catch up.

As this newspaper’s John Seward reported, our spending on small unmanned aerial systems has quadrupled since the beginning of Russia’s war to conquer Ukraine. The increase, outlined in the National Defense Authorization Act, has risen from a paltry $398 million to $1.7 billion.

We apparently have a lot of capabilities in drone technology. The U.S. Air Force and the Navy reportedly have stealthy drones. Iran claims to have brought down one Air Force stealth drone in 2011, an RQ-170, by cyberattack.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll (whom President Trump calls the “drone guy”) is focused, naturally, on U.S. Army programs in pursuit of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Drone Dominance Program. This initiative is supposed to be the means by which we grow in our capabilities across the board, but that may not be nearly enough.

China, always thinking about its scheduled 2027 attack on Taiwan, has reportedly developed an airborne drone carrier aircraft that has unknown capabilities. The military hasn’t made public any U.S. capability that could match that.

China’s airborne drone carrier aircraft could launch a swarm of drones in any attack on Taiwan or U.S. territory. Those drones could be a mixture of stealthy and non-stealthy drones that could conduct reconnaissance, bombing or electronic interference missions.

We need to match and then quickly surpass China’s capabilities. Any large U.S. aircraft, say, a C-17, could be equipped to match China’s capability, but such an aircraft would have a radar signature equal to the size of a Pennsylvania Dutch barn. Smaller U.S. aircraft could carry drones, but neither the F-35 nor the F-22 could carry more than one or two drones in their concealed weapons bays.

We need to develop an airborne drone carrier urgently. We have to go to the best thinkers in the Defense Department, the somewhat crazy geniuses at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to find the means to make a large drone carrier aircraft that could be at least a bit stealthy.

The guys and gals at DARPA are able to do that, and they must be tasked to do so. Almost all DARPA projects are secret, and they should be. What the public knows, our enemies also know. Secrecy allows us to conceal at least some things from our enemies’ best intelligence operations.

Mr. Hegseth’s Drone Dominance Program must go far beyond our enemies’ capabilities to restore our technological advantage in drone warfare. The Army may concentrate on small drones, down to the size of insects, but the Air Force and the Navy need to do that and more. This means we have to advance our anti-drone technology as well.

The Israelis have announced a laser enhancement to their anti-missile and anti-drone systems called the Iron Beam. They will share that technology with us. It has its limitations — the power system probably is carried by a tractor trailer — but it nevertheless is a highly capable weapon we need to emulate and improve upon.

The “drone gap” is not imaginary, as the “missile gap” proved to be. We must push beyond technological barriers to create drones that can attack the enemy and protect our forces. Whether we do or not, our enemies definitely will.

• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and a contributing editor for The American Spectator.