The Elara Edge 

Episode 35: Department of War Seeks Solutions for Emerging Counter-UAS Mission 

Host: Scott King 

SME: Lt. Gen. (Ret) David “Abu” Nahom, President of Aeronautics & Missions Systems sector at Elara Nova (DN) 

Col (Ret) JP “Spear” Mintz, Managing Director of Aeronautics & Missions Systems sector at Elara Nova (JPM) 

00:02 – 01:40 

A series of escalating events in recent years has demonstrated the growing prevalence of drones in surveillance and military operations. In 2024, unidentified drones flew over a military base in Langley, Virgina. In 2025, Israel used drones to take out Iranian air defense systems in a coordinated attack, while Ukraine launched “Operation Spiderweb,” using drones to damage and destroy aircraft deep within Russian territory. 

Now, a new report from the Department of Defense Inspector General uncovered a series of challenges for defending the United States’ military installations from similar drone incursions or attacks. The report coincides with updated guidance from the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force 401, an Army-led organization tasked with the counter-Unmanned Aerial System (or UAS) mission. The updated guidance requires military installation commanders to prepare their own counter-UAS plans within the next 60 days. 

As part of this effort, the Department of War is actively seeking new and innovative solutions for the counter-UAS mission. 

Welcome to “The Elara Edge,” we have two guests today, joining us to discuss the inherent challenges of the emerging counter-UAS mission, as well as some of the solutions that are being considered. 

First, we have retired Lieutenant General David “Abu” Nahom, President of Elara Nova’s Aeronautics & Mission Systems Sector. General Nahom previously served for 36 years with the United States Air Force, culminating in his roles as Commander of Alaskan Command, the Alaskan NORAD Region, and the Eleventh Air Force. 

Sir, welcome back to the show! 

01:41 – 01:42 

(DN): Great to be here, thanks again Scott.  

01:43 – 02:02 

Also joining us is the Managing Director of the AMS sector, Dr. JP “Spear” Mintz. Recently retired from the Air Force, then-Colonel Mintz commanded in the Air Force’s Spectrum Warfare Wing and also served as a Special Advisor to multiple senior leaders including at NORAD and US Northern Command, among others. 

Sir, welcome to the show! 

02:03 – 02:05  

(JPM): Thanks Scott. Appreciate you setting this up for us. 

02:06 – 02:24 

Thank you both for taking the time to join us today.  

Now, when it comes to Unmanned Aerial Systems, or UAS’s, the United States Air Force already has a well-established means of identifying and categorizing these drones – specifically by Group Numbers. 

Can you walk us through these group numbers and how we understand the differences between them? 

02:25 – 05:36 

(JPM): Yeah, you bet. So the group classification here, at least as it references Group One to Group Three. It’s based on, a couple of things: size, weight, it’s operating altitude above ground level. So a Group One drone, 20 pounds or less, flies at less than 1200 feet above ground level or AGL. What you’re thinking about really here is your hobbyist quadcopter types, the kind of things nearly anybody could buy off the internet. 

The next group, Group Two, the size is up to between 21 and 55 pounds, flies up to about 3500ft above ground level. And that’s your mid-sized drones thinking of things like a ScanEagle, etc. These are usually going to be things that have a military or state-backed flavor, because although some of the hobbyist ones could potentially reach this category, the cost and proliferation of these Group Two drones is not nearly as much as it is with Group One.   

And then Group Three, which is up to 1,320 pounds and up to a flight level of 180. So you really think of these as smaller unmanned aircraft and not normally what you might think of as a drone in traditional parlance.  

And these groups matter here because of a number of things. So one is size. So at least from a radar cross-section perspective, it’s a lot easier to detect a larger UAS, a larger drone than a smaller one. And then of course, the larger the UAS, the more fuel and payloads they can carry over a much larger distance.  

The second what matters is the altitude at which they fly, because in radar, the closer it is to the ground, the more interference you have from things like trees, ground clutter, buildings, etc. and not only that, but you might also reduce your ability to actually detect the UAS just from a purely line of sight perspective. And then also, operating altitude is important because at higher altitudes you generally have higher speeds, right?  

And then third weight matters when it comes to the collateral risk of engagements with these things. Because a larger UAS, a 1,300 pound drone laden with explosive crashes into a populated area, it’s very different than a 18 ounce quadcopter that has nothing on it except for a camera. 

And so all of these factors matter. Also, in terms of identification. [If] you want to identify a UAS. You do that in order to make some assumptions about its intent. Is it a large one traveling at high speeds, pointed at a target you might consider critical on the blue side? So you think maybe it’s weaponized?  

Or is it a child operating their quadcopter they got for the holidays around an airbase because, you know, he or she loves the Air Force, that it just wants to fly or curious about what’s at the base or wherever it is. 

And this identification and intent are important because you have to decide what you want to do about it. Do you want to use a weapon against it? Do you want to do nothing about it? Do you want to make a phone call? And when you think about engaging this with a weapon, something that could take out a smaller Group One drone may not be effective against one of the larger Group Three drones and vice versa. 

And the inherent challenge lies here in a similar situation of a car driving along the side of an airbase, right? You don’t know who’s in there, what’s in there, what they’re doing. It could be just some people showing up to the base, some tourists looking at something they’ve never seen before, or you could be developing a problem there. 

So you can’t always assume intent from simply the size or shape or speed or even position of an aircraft. So you have to be ready to respond and I think that’s a really important topic to get into.

05:37 – 06:11 

(DN):Yeah, [with] the types, what’s interesting, too. Is that how you control them, too. These smaller ones that are less, they’re less sophisticated. They may be line of sight where the person actually controlling it is in some kind of visual of the actual system. 

When you get to these larger ones, these could be beyond line of sight, whether that is through some kind of a satellite feed or some kind of other network that has been established. 

And usually as you go up the groups, you’ll see more of the beyond line of sight and the ability to control these things at further away distances. But I actually have to have somebody inside of the quadcopter itself for the Group One.

06:12 – 06:15 

So how can the Air Force respond to a drone incursion or attack? 

06:16 – 08:45 

(JPM): Well, Scott, there’s a couple of ways to think about this. And it’s not as simple as a scaling problem. Just thinking about the number of shots you have to take or how you might engage this to defeat one or more of these, including a swarm. You have to take into consideration what laws are in place. Policy and regulations are needed to make sure that these UAS’s aren’t proliferated out into the wild, and so anybody can get their hands on them at any time. 

 Some of those are clearly civilian dual-use technology, so you can’t put limits on that. But some of the bigger ones of course, you can. You want to have some of those technologies retained for military use. 

Another thing to consider is defending forward. So if this were a standard military operation in which you were protecting a base or a location from an air attack, you’re going to conduct intelligence operations to try to figure out who’s out there, do a threat assessment of why they want to attack you, how they’re going to do it, what are their capabilities to do so, etc.. And what can you do really, is to defend against those threats forward. Can you take out their capabilities forward, whether that’s kinetically, non-kinetically or in some other way?  

There’s also, of course, what you would think of as deterrence. You can deter your adversary from doing something by showing them they’re not going to succeed in their drone attack or their drone swarm operations, or at least if they do something, it’s not going to be effective or cost effective to them if they go ahead and conduct this operation.  

 I think the cost-effective nature of this is really important, too. If we have these small, cheap drones making attacks or incursions into our airspace, it’s not cost effective from our perspective to expend exquisite expensive AMRAMMs, Patriot missiles, etc. to take them out. Those weapons are best used for the targets they were designed for. 

That’s why they’re so exquisite and expensive, because they’re very good at what they do. But if we have something like the APKWS which can be modified to achieve the same results at a much lower cost without having to waste our expensive weapons, that’s a real benefit. So there’s also non-kinetic means of responding, but we can get into that in a bit. 

But what I wanted to say is that it’s you’re not just going to go straight to shooting something. You have to detect and then determine intent, right? You detect, identify you have to determine intent. You have to make a decision on what you’re going to do about that, and you’re going to pair an effector to it, meaning to match a shooter and a target. 

If you decide you are going to shoot it, then you have to actually use the effector, right? You have to shoot whatever you’re going to shoot or however you take this down. And that all takes time. And that whole process from detect to shoot and even assess whether or not your shot was effective, is part of what we think of as a command and control structure that needs to happen and put all of those things together. 

Sir, do you have anything to add on that?

08:46 – 10:26 

(DN):One thing Spear hit on is the command control piece is going to be one of the hardest pieces. And you think about what Golden Dome and Joint Task Force 401 and some of the things that are coming forward right now in terms of homeland defense.  

But when you look at that command and control piece, think about what the size that Spear talked about for a type three. It’s not much different than a small general aviation aircraft. And how do you discern between one and the other? 

And so that piece, that’s where that command and control is going to be so key about what is a threat? What is not a threat? And be able to do that in a timely manner, where then you can pair the weapon like Spear talked about and take offensive action if that’s what’s needed. 

I think in my experience and my background of working with NORAD. I think that’s going to be the hardest part. And especially in a homeland about that command and control piece, discerning what is a threat and then getting after it in a timely manner.  

And I’ll tell you, the other part of that, too, is policy piece, too. What can you do in the homeland? If it’s just a hobbyist just trying to stir things up. What is America willing to put up with, with collateral damage when you start shooting weapons over an American city and shrapnel and things start falling down? What can we do? What can we not do? I think these are important things. 

And then when Spear talked about the non-kinetic piece. A lot of the non-kinetic, is also going to have an effect on air travel and other things we do, like cell phone service and a number of things that we rely on every day as a society. 

What are we going to be willing to do without, in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum? Whether that’s G.P.S.? Imagine in a city we shut down GPS to avoid a swarm. Well there goes all the Ubers and the Waymos, and you think about everything else we rely on every day in society. 

So, these will be important questions moving forward. Spear back to you. 

10:27 – 13:27 

(JPM): Yeah. Thanks, Abu and so, Scott, to kind of move on to your question about defeating these systems, we do have non-kinetic mechanisms, like Abu suggested: things like denying GPS, potential cyber attacks against whoever is controlling the drones, [it] could be responding in the RF spectrum or even network hacking these systems. Abu also mentioned the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, or JIATF 401, and it was just announced that, JIATF 401 contracted for two of these DroneHunter F700 counter drone systems. 

These DroneHunters can deploy a tethered net to go capture a drone or UAS, intruding in airspace in a way that minimizes the potential for collateral damage. And oh, by the way, they’re reusable. So in some situations and again, some drones, that will make a lot more sense than firing an AMRAMM or a Patriot missile. 

And then when you think about non-kinetic effects, one of the benefits is because there’s also less collateral damage on those. You don’t have two systems out there exploding and then causing debris to fall on civilian populations. But you also have to consider who has the authorities to use these particular actions anyway? And this is because the counter-UAS problem, especially in the US, but in many countries, is a problem that lies in the seams of law enforcement and military operations. 

Traditionally, lines are very well codified in law and for good reason about what the military can do and what law enforcement needs to be doing. And we want to make sure that the appropriate authorities are being used to detect, identify and respond to whatever potential threat that we’re talking about here so that you can achieve the desired outcome, while making sure that we’re protecting our civilian populace in the ways that the Constitution intended. 

So if you look at the kinetic side, there are times when you will need to use the kinetic side, because you either may not have a non-kinetic option, or the non-kinetic option may just not be as effective. And in some cases, you may get an indication that an attack is coming until the very last second. So you have to find ways to absolutely make a stop to whatever’s coming into your airspace. 

A kinetic effector you can think of as a gun that could be a handheld shotgun to an actual military style weapon, like a 20 millimeter that is carried on an aircraft, 30 millimeter aircraft. Or it could be a modified rocket like the APKWS. And there are other emerging technologies like we just talked about, can be sent out to go in and not only take these things out, but also just track them down and figure out what it is that they’re doing. 

And then there’s another solution which kind of spans what I’d say is there’s a seam or gap between the idea of a kinetic solution and a non-kinetic solution, and that’s directed energy which is now starting to come into its own. There are lots of systems out there that use RF energy, microwave energy, or even laser energy to shut these things down or damage them, right? 

But even those come with really important collateral damage considerations. And so while in some ways they may be better than launching a big heavy explosive missile over a populated areas. And in other ways, they’re not. Because if you think about the air traffic that might be behind your target flying, you know, behind it. And if you’re trying to lase a drone and accidentally lays the pilots of an airliner passing overhead, that could have some serious negative implications. We don’t want to be doing that. 

So you also have to consider how directed energy has potential collateral damage as well. So as these technologies develop, we’ll continue to see those things emerge.

13:28 – 16:01 

(DN):Yeah, I think the good thing is an industry is being unleashed on this problem set. And you’re seeing solutions every day come about that, even a couple of years ago, I would have never imagined. We’ve realized as a nation what a problem this is. 

We’ve certainly seen some of the cases. I know, Scott, you said you want to get into later on, talk about what went on with Ukraine with that complex attack using small UAS’s. But there’s also been a lot of cases in America that garner attention, like the swarms that were over in New Jersey, not too long ago. We certainly had a problem at Langley Air Force Base a few years back as well, with drone swarms.  

You’ve seen other small things where airliners have hit drones and done damage, and that’s garnered some attention. You saw where you had the California wildfires last year, and they had two very effective Canadian firefighting aircraft. 

One was grounded for a long time because it hit a hobbyist drone, and the drone was just watching the wildfires. And so people are starting to realize that these are a problem, not just for military use, but the proliferation, actually you can get on the internet or go down to Best Buy, and buy this type one UAS’s for almost nothing, and you can fly them just because you’re curious, and you could be a huge impediment to a firefighting operation or a police response with helicopters or, any number of things. 

And so I think, now that it’s getting a lot of notoriety, I think that’s good. And I think, industry is responding, and I think the technology will be there.  

Some of the response of those UAS’s in New Jersey. I mean, they’re right in the approach corridor of Newark Airport. What do you do at that point? And I’ll tell you from the ground, especially when it’s nighttime and you look up – you don’t know the difference. You see a red light. That could be a drone 100 yards away, or that could be an airplane ten miles away. And that light will look the same.  

 Again, it goes back to that command and control about what is the threat. And then what do you do about it? Because some of the things Spear went into, are absolutely spot on. When you look at the homeland, it’s such a complex area, but I think a lot of the areas we’re going to operate in are going to be equally as complex, whether that’s a European theater. 

Certainly, many of the South Pacific areas, when you’re talking about in Japan and Korea Guam and some of these places that have quite dense populations and busy airports. These will be challenges that the technology is going to have to solve because, it was very easy to put these quadcopters up there. 

And I think even easier to make these swarms and some of these things that are so impressive. You see, it’s amazing when you’re watching swarms where there is at halftime of a football game or whether that’s in some kind of a military operation, like you saw that the Ukrainians use and the Israelis use in their complex attacks in Iran, but now it’s time to figure out how to counter that one when necessary and I think that’s where we are. 

16:02 – 16:11 

I’d like to dig deeper into the emerging role of UAS’s in military operations. Can you elaborate on this role, particularly with recent examples like Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb?” 

16:12 – 17:17 

(JPM): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Operation Spider Web, from what we can gather from open source reporting, was a June 2025 surprise drone attack on Russian air bases using small UAS’s. And by using special operations forces, the Ukrainians were able to position these small one-way attack drones near the edges of these Russian strategic air bases and then launched attacks on the aircraft there while they were on the ground. 

You look at this from a cost perspective. You get a number of small, relatively cheap one-way attack drones that took out several strategic Russian aircraft, probably hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. And from an asymmetry perspective, there’s a lot to be gained from that.  

The other thing that’s really important, that operation, and I sort of alluded to this earlier, but it’s this idea of reduced tactical warning time. If you position these drones around the edges of an airbase, you no longer have minutes, much less hours to react, to detect, to identify, determine intent, facilitate the command and control we talked about, select the effectors and then time to even make the intercept. You have seconds to react at best. And so now we need to find ways to close that entire kill chain in the counter UAS mission so much more rapidly.

17:18 – 20:37 

(DN):One other interesting thing to get from the open source. If you look at where these attacks were, these were not airbases right around Ukraine. These were air bases in the heartland of Russia, very, very far away from the fight. Where more than likely they thought they were fairly safe from any kind of attacks from the Ukrainians because they weren’t really going that deep. 

So, I think it was a huge surprise, a huge wake up, not just for the Russians, but I think the rest of the world, too. Where you can think you have these airbases with very expensive, exquisite equipment that you’re sheltering there and they became vulnerable very quickly.  

And you look at what the Ukrainians, attacked. They attacked nuclear capable strategic bombers. And they damaged and destroyed quite a few of them, which is significant to the Russian strategic defense of their nation. To me, what I took from it was a wake up call. 

And like Spear said, maybe you put something, a critical element a couple hundred miles from your border because you think you’re safe from attack. But next thing you know, you have a swarm of drones that comes out of a garbage can or a truck, right outside your gate. And seconds later, you’ve lost some really key element to your defense or a key power grid or something very critical to your nation. 

And so I think as you look at the defense against these swarms, again, they don’t carry much weaponry or if they’re small, but put it in the right place at the right time could be very significant. And I thought even though Spider Web was an amazing example of what the Ukrainians were able to achieve.  

I still think the Israeli example about how they use small UAS’s, in conjunction with more conventional forces like F-35s and, and F-15s and other was very unique because these small UAS’s were able to really enable a very complex attack very far from home.  

In the case of Israelis, you really had a complex operation that involved something as simple as a quadcopter and something as complex as an F-35 really in the same operation. And I think they really showed how effective these could be to do, some things as part of an operation, like maybe take out an air defense system or take out a key communication node, or take out maybe a city power grid, something that you could do with a swarm of small drones, especially if you can get it in close. 

And I think that’s what both the Israelis and the Ukrainians were able to achieve. They were able to figure out using, frankly, special operations to get these things close into the fight and actually have them be part of the more conventional fight and I think that’s something we’ve got to be very attuned to.

Now, it may be different in the Pacific because the distances are different with all the oceans, but it doesn’t mean you couldn’t float some of this over on a ship. There’s plenty of ways that people who say that these don’t apply to the Pacific, I think, are missing some of the broader point. This was, to me, was a display of how you use something that you wouldn’t expect to be part of a complex operation and really enhance what they were able to do. 

And in the case of the Israelis shutting down the air defense systems that the Iranians had and then they were able to bring in much more conventional firepower in because, you know, as effective as these swarms can be, as impressive as they look, these small quadcopters, these type one UAS’s don’t carry a lot of firepower. 

But in the right place at the at the right time can be quite effective because in the case of the F-15’s that came in pretty quickly after with a lot of firepower, were able to get through and do quite a bit of damage, neutralize the air defense systems and allow Israel to achieve their objectives pretty quickly.  

If you think about the distances from Israel to Iran and what they’re able to achieve. It was just nothing short of amazing.

20:38 – 21:29 

(JPM): Yeah, I mean, this really comes down to the asymmetry in air warfare. If you think in the past there’s an air base that has aircraft that can just take off, fly for minutes to hours to get to their targets, then perhaps go attack another airbase. There was a lot of parity there in terms of operational timelines, but what we saw in Operation Spiderweb is that the decision time was reduced to near zero. 

If you have minutes or hours to prepare, you can detect, you can identify, determine intent, you can harden your defenses. You’re going to reposition aircraft and you can launch. But when you only have seconds to respond, it underscores the absolute importance of a number of things [that] we talked about the speed at which you can detect this threat, determine what it is, assume or determine the intent behind it, and then being able to command and control, match effectors to targets, and then use them with the appropriate authorities to make that response happen in a fast enough manner. It’s really challenging the current air defense paradigm. 

21:30 – 21:55 

Okay, so let’s get into some of the solutions. At the end of last year, the Air Force put out an RFI, or a Request for Information, for technology that would modify an Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (or APKWS) that would be capable of taking down Group 1 to Group 3 drones. 

Spear, you referenced the APKWS earlier, so maybe you can start us off with this: what is APKWS? And how has its use evolved over time?

21:56 – 22:20 

(JPM): Yeah, so the APKWS, or the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, it’s a laser guidance kit that converts a 2.75in rocket into a precision guided munition. It was originally developed as the AGR 20 for US service, and it’s got a laser guidance section. And then the rocket, motor, warhead and fuze are drawn from existing inventory. So you think of this as like an add-on kit that can use an older, cheaper weapon in a new way. 

22:21 – 24:38 

(DN): I was actually in the desert back in 2016, 2017, 2018, in Qatar, working at the [sic], when we started using this on our aircraft and really, what it boils down to is the ability to get after targets in a very, very cost effective manner. We call it “the right side of the cost curve.” 

You know, when you’re taking out a target that the enemy may have built up. You’re talking about maybe a $10,000 car, and you’re using a $2 million missile to take it out. This got us on the better side of the cost curve where we could do things very cheap and at mass. You could put quite a few of these things on an aircraft, and you could load them very quickly. 

And we found them to be very accurate, especially in low risk areas, where the aircraft could get pretty close to their targets, which was at the time when we were in the counter-ISIS fight, with what was going on in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan at the time. These were extremely useful, in that air to ground. 

What happened over this time as we’ll get into the RFI, is we figured out that you can use these things and other things that are moving slow like UAS’s. You know, when you look at what you’re defending and you think about the ground, it just completely makes sense.  

Let’s get away from Europe or the homeland. Let’s start talking about the Pacific, where what we’re defending is air bases and other key nodes and islands and other places around the Pacific. 

We know what the enemy is aiming at. We know where we got to be with our defensive systems. And that’s on the ground right next to these air bases and other locations that we’re defending. It’s the hockey analogy. We know the opposing team wants to put the puck in the net. So you put the goalie in front of the net.  

So if we can figure out how to use something like this, that low cost, many rounds, low collateral damage, because even on these islands [there] are collateral damage issues. If you think about some of the places that we are stationed around the Pacific, there are cities and there are quite a bit of urban sprawl in some of these islands. So you are concerned with the low collateral as well.

If you could figure out how to do this on the ground, this would make a lot of sense for getting after that and not having to launch a very expensive Patriot missile, for instance, against a very low cost UAS. Rather, save the Patriot for a theater ballistic missile or something that it was truly designed against coming at your airbase or your area in the Pacific.  

And again, very, very inexpensive UAS’s, and we were using very expensive missiles on them. It’s that cost curve that we’re never going to win against. This really helps us get after that. 

24:39 – 26:11 

(JPM): I mean, if you think about it, APKWS it was originally designed not to target airborne threats, but now it’s being used to target those new low-cost airborne UAS threats. There’s a couple things that are really important about this. We talked about the cost of these both high end exquisite weapon systems like the AMRAMM versus the APKWS. 

But think also about the opportunity cost of using those AMRAMMs, or Patriots other exquisite weapon systems to target drones. When we think about inventory and replacement of those shots. Like, I would rather have my fighter aircraft save their AMRAMMs for what they’re really needed for to target other fighter aircraft or other large aircraft. So in addition to the cost differential here, there’s an inventory advantage as well. 

The other thing this does is it provides as a new launcher opportunity. So instead of a fighter aircraft carrying these APKWS, we might have a different form factor available, like a ground base launchers, including ones that the RFI is asking about.

And then finally, this presents an opportunity for a lower collateral damage weapon. So instead of something large, like an AMRAMM, especially if you’re near a place where there’s a higher risk for civilian population, something like an APKWS, would be lower collateral damage, certainly not zero. 

But if you’re in an empty area where there’s no civilian population around or population around at all, then collateral damage considerations might be a little less important.   

But as we know, there are a lot of these kind of UAS incursions around very populated areas and airports, houses nearby, etc. so providing a lower or zero collateral damage weapon is extremely important to the future of countering these sort of threats. 

26:12 – 27:19 

(DN):The first time I saw this technology being used in the Middle East, it was amazing. Because if you look at the rocket technology that they’re using, other than the guidance packages, which Spear, talk to you earlier, I mean, the technology that goes back to the Vietnam War. 

We’ve been having rockets and the launchers that use it very similar to that for a long time. It’s just something we had never thought of. And it really was a mix of operators and engineers coming together, figuring out a very effective, a very cheap way. And the cheap is important, because, again, when the enemy can put up thousands of these targets, we can’t be shooting millions of missiles at all of them. 

At some point, we’ll run out of those missiles and we will run out of money, too. It was such a huge thing to get into our aircraft for air to ground and it was really the innovation to bring it in air to air, by some test pilots and engineers in the test world, and then operationally, it was proven out in the deserts in Syria. 

And now you look at a ground-based version of it. Then again, what’s the next thing for APKWS? Maybe there’s something that we can go even further to enhance our base defense and our and eventually our homeland defense as well. 

27:20 – 27:22 

And so what makes an RFI like this important? 

27:23 – 28:47 

(JPM): So let’s talk just for a second about what an RFI is. It’s a Request for Information. It’s an exploration of what’s out there and what’s in the market. What it’s not is a request for proposal. It does not signal that there is a direct impending contract coming out of this. But I think that’s important because it’s asking about the same precision guided, 70 millimeter rocket concept for a ground launch and then aimed at Group One and Group Three UAS’s. 

So these small drones think DJI quadcopter all the way through tactical UAS, which are really just small aircraft. And now the RFI just came out in November and the responses were due at the end of 2025. So I think right now the Air Force is chomping on the information that they received.  

So I think this RFI is important for another reason, which is that it’s signaling that the Air Force is coming into its own about this idea of base defense and investing in air base defense. 

And I think that’s important and good in a way, because the counter-UAS fight is really an air superiority problem. And while a lot of history would show that air base defense is a very small part of that, clearly this new UAS threat is proliferating and causing that particular style of threat causing threat to air bases is so much bigger part of air superiority now. 

And of course, the Air Force has air superiority is one of its core functions. And this conversation goes to show that air superiority is not just fighter jets fighting over a large swath of water 50 miles away from each other or more. It goes all the way from small UAS’s all the way up to hypersonics, ICBMs and beyond. 

28:48 – 31:44 

(DN):Well, there’s other reasons too. If you’re going to defend a base – to be airborne, you can’t be airborne forever. You have to actually get the airplane in the air. It’s going to have to be in some kind of a position where it can intercept. If you can do it from the ground, it is much more efficient to do that.

If you know we have a critical base let’s say on a South Pacific island and we know that that is vulnerable. We put what’s defending it on the ground. We don’t have to have the airplane airborne, with gas and with tankers.  

We put it on the ground and it’s a cheaper, more efficient way to actually defend a point. Now, the difference is what if I have to defend a very large area. That’s why you’re going to want things airborne as well. There is a mix of that. 

When you look at the air base defense piece and what Spear’s alluded to is we’re going to be in many places. And I keep going back to the Pacific fight because that’s certainly a fight we center on in how we look at investment across the Air Force. We’re going to be in many places.

We’re going to be getting there very quickly. And we may not be able to rely on anyone else to provide the air base air defense. So we may have to bring something in and we can bring in light quickly. Very effective. Defend these locations against all myriad of threats. And, the type one, two and three. 

So a relatively small aircraft right on down to the quadcopter. You can go buy it out at Best Buy or Walmart. These things can and very, very cheap enter into this world, as you’ve seen in the Middle East and other places, and the ability to mass these things in locations that can be very not helpful to air operations, even whether they have offensive weapons or not. 

You put a swarm of these things near an air base. It’s really hard to operate airplanes. We have problems just with physical birds, let alone birds that are made of metal like this around an air base. And so as we move throughout the Pacific and we move quickly, thinking about the ACE concept and how we’d actually operate, the ability to defend our own air bases, it’s going to be more and more important as we get further and as more of this proliferates. 

And it’s not just about a small non-state actor using something like this. It could be a state actor. And this is a part of a more elaborate, complex attack using very small UAS’s, and at the same time maybe theater ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and other things to use in concert with each other.  

And you certainly see that in the homeland. You’re going to hear them talk about critical infrastructure and what needs to be defended in the homeland as we go further down this Golden Dome conversation. So it will be important to have some kind of ground-based interceptor system like we have around the National Capital Region right now.  

But at the same time, America is very large. And you’re going to have to have systems like this that have the ability to get up and move and go from point to point very fast, to defend large swaths of our nation. Certainly when you start thinking about Alaska and the Pacific, Hawaii, Guam and all the areas that we would have to defend, we couldn’t just be on the ground. It would be very difficult. That said, we know there’s the critical places we’re going to have to defend, like the National Capital Region or other critical locations for our nation. 

31:45 – 31:58 

The rising need to address the counter-UAS mission also coincides with the United States’ renewed emphasis on homeland defense, namely through the Golden Dome initiative.    

So what role and relevance do drones and UAS’s have to the Golden Dome conversation? 

31:59 – 33:55 

(JPM): With Golden Dome, if we back up for a moment, this idea of defending the homeland against air and missile attacks is something that has a long history in NORAD and in U.S. Northern Command.  

And the systems that we have now, were because we produce capabilities. So the threats that existed at the time and the priorities that we had in terms of funding and the technologies that we had available. If you go back and read the executive order for Golden Dome, it’s now an idea of how do we focus not only on ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, advanced cruise missiles, next generation aerial attacks, and as a homeland defense type of initiative? 

And so the counter-UAS flight is absolutely relevant to Golden Dome, but it’s certainly not the entirety of it.  

 But there are really there are overlaps. And these overlaps are really important because Golden Dome will be a layered system or system of systems, and not just from a physics perspective in terms of what areas you might be defending, but also how you might do this, because you’re going to need capabilities that will overlap in terms of what we talked about earlier in the detection, identifying, determining intent, command and control, selecting and responding with effectors is going to apply across the board there.  

Even if those detection mechanisms and the effector mechanisms may be very different depending on the type of threat. And so what you’re going to need are systems that can be integrated together, or a system that can detect hypersonic threats and ballistic missile threats, as well as systems that can detect these small UAS drone threats, in order that a greater and more integrated command and control system can help the authorities and operators decide. 

What should we do about this? What can we do about this? What timelines do we have?, What authorities do we need? And then of course, at the end game, what are we going to do against this thing? Is this going to be a kinetic kill? Is it going to be a hand off to law enforcement? Is it going to be something else? 

So as we look at this, some of the questions that Golden Dome is going to have to ask and answer and is asking about authorities, about collateral risk, collateral damage systems, they’re going to apply to this counter-UAS mission. And I think it’s going to require a collaborative approach among all the teams that are looking at this problem set.

Sir, over to you. 

33:56 – 34:57 

(DN):Yeah. I think I’ll just kind of narrow in on the that the C2 aspect, the command control aspect, and it really is great to see that the Joint Interagency Task Force, JIATF-401, is working with the Golden Dome team in terms of the command and control, because it’s going to have to be seamless across all domains. 

Where I think Golden Dome really, again, go back to the executive order. We’re thinking about ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, hyper glide vehicles, some of these even space weapons coming from and emanating from space. There are attacks that could be more conventional. Right on down to, even cyber and really any domain, and if we’re truly going to be safe as a nation – what Golden Dome intends.

The counter small UAS fight could be something just that specifically, or in the case of if you go back to, we talked about, the Israeli case in Iran, it could be part of a complex attack on our homeland and so the command and control structures are going to have to be seamless across and I think that’s a great indicator to industry, about where they focus their technologies because they’re going to have to have to be able to be seamlessly integrated across all domains. 

34:58 – 35:05 

Now, moving forward, what should industry’s takeaways be from the growing relevance of counter-UAS as part of these homeland defense conversations? 

35:06 – 36:33 

(JPM): Yeah, that’s a great question, Scott. I think the biggest thing that industry should take from this – is this is a real need. It’s not just a passing fad. It’s an emerging threat that’s not only causing real problems today, but it’s going to continue to emerge and evolve.  

And so looking not only at this RFI, but the wider Golden Dome initiative and what’s going on around the world, industry should take this time to start investing in and exploring ways that they can contribute to the counter-UAS flight, and whether that be in detection, in identification, command and control, or some kind of effector as well.

And there are a lot of new technologies out there. And I think that’s what’s interesting about this mission set, is because of the small, cheap, proliferated nature of these threat drones themselves.  

What you’ll find is that a lot of nontraditional companies can and are putting offerings into this space where in the past they didn’t or couldn’t compete because traditional air defense technologies were very expensive, required a lot of R&D just because of the nature of the threat, needing a missile to go many, many, many miles and detect high fast targets. 

But now this new threat in this new space allows for greater and faster innovation from smaller defense companies, and also nontraditional and nondefense companies. Because, again, it’s not just a military challenge. This is also a law enforcement challenge. So it’s a civil air space. It’s a public safety challenge. And so there’s opportunities for companies both in the U.S., outside the US for defense and non-defense, large and small, to be working on these technologies. 

And they’re not working on a military technology. Maybe they’re working on a law enforcement, public safety technology because they’re going to need this as well.

36:34 – 38:57 

(DN):I think the challenge we have for some of these companies, too, is that, as they develop technology, is how you bring this into some kind of a program where they, these small companies can have the steady stream of money that they’re going to need to stay in business. 

You know, many companies are coming up with an amazing technology. But if it doesn’t get adopted, that company can’t stay in business if they’re not able to sell it. So I think that will be a challenge, of the government, finding the right technologies and bringing it into a program where you can keep these companies moving forward. 

 And then in many cases, some of these small companies will merge with larger companies are merging their small companies. That’s so they can continue on. But that’s where the Valley of Death is very real when there is actually money and small business innovation efforts, SBIR I, SBIR II, other places, STRATFI, that small companies can find money to continue to develop their products. 

But then to get to that point to some kind of a program award, sometimes it’s a very large leap. It’s very hard for these small companies. So I think that’s something for us to watch. I think that’s something where Elara Nova can be quite effective as we help some of these companies manage that Valley of Death. 

 And whether that’s pairing up with a company or whether that’s looking for other avenues for funding so they can stay alive and then making sure that the government sees their technology and sees how applicable that can be to this fight because, the secret sauce is really going to be in some of these small companies and some of it’s just amazing technology as we bring it forward, it’s not always going to be a large companies.  

But in many cases, the large companies, like the Lockheed Martin’s and Northrop’s, the BAE’s and others are very important because they do have the ability, to extend the funding and have the structures to not only, to continue to develop the technology, but then to scale it, at the necessary speed that the Department of War is going to need moving forward. 

 And I think the industry is so far, doing a pretty good job responding and so I look forward to more indications from the government of exactly what they’re looking for, so industry can stay focused. We do have the best industry in the world. And we will figure out how you can make this command and control, where you have a handful of small UAS’s around an airbase like we had at Langley a few years ago, and we’re able to quickly identify where they are, who they are, and then apply the countermeasure to neutralize it if it is truly a threat or if it’s not a threat – let it go, or if it turns out to be a manned general aviation airplane that just wandered into the wrong airspace, you let it go, and then there you deal with it in terms of a civil matter. We’re not there yet, but I think we’re getting there very fast and it’s great to see that the country is focused on this.

38:58 – 39:09 

In what ways does the dual-use implications for counter-UAS mission, also present a unique opportunity for the government to establish a public-private partnership that would accelerate the development of counter-UAS technologies? 

39:10 – 40:50 

(JPM): Yeah, so I think if you think of this as a dual-use technology or a dual-use technology space, there’s of course the military applications. And particularly in the U.S., we’ve seen opportunities to spend money on countering this threat, both for US air bases, for U.S. air bases overseas, etc. but that’s still a relatively small subset of what this problem space could look like. 

If you think about every police department in the country, every police department perhaps in the world needing something like this system or something to counter threats in this space from both local and national safety objectives. I mean, just from a counter-UAS perspective, the need to detect, identify and determine what you’re going to do about it is not simply a military application, right? 

You need to do that in law enforcement and public safety, as well. And so this need is going to be proliferated across the globe if it’s not already there. And any place where these drones could cause problems. And there’ll be different ways of handling them as well. We don’t need to get into this discussion about whether every police department’s going to have something that can shoot down a drone because they may take a different approach. It’s not really us to say what’s going to be, but they are going to need something to detect, identify and then make a decision on what they’re going to do about it.

But it also does beg the question about what types of law or policy we need that are essentially the equivalent of a police officer pulling over somebody that’s speeding, right?A drone not where it’s supposed to be or approaching someplace it’s not supposed to be. It’s kind of like somebody’s speeding. So what’s the counter-UAS equivalent of a police officer putting their blue lights on to pull somebody over.  

So as the U.S. technology evolves, policy evolves and norms evolve. How we think about these aircraft and how they operate in the national and international airspace, we’re going to have to rethink how we work together from a civil and military perspective, so that we can take advantage of these new technologies while also keeping our population safe. 

40:51 – 42:25 

(DN):I think the dual-use is actually really going to be very effective because for the same reason Newark Airport is not going to want to have small UAS’s flying around the final approach corridor. They’re going to want a way to detect those small UAS’s and get them away. 

And whether that is some kind of a non-kinetic effect where they can actually move them away, or whether they physically take the things down, because there is a need in both the commercial and military sector, I think the technology is going to advance that much quicker because, on the commercial side, they come up with a way to keep UAS’s away from a busy airport in a downtown area like Newark Airport, New Jersey. 

Then we probably can use that very similar technology at Anderson Airbase in Guam. And for an offensive drone swarm there’s probably some various similarities in that technology.  

So I think that’s probably a good thing that this is a problem both in military and civil area, and you saw that, last year with those devastating wildfires in LA County, when they had that problem with drone swarms, some of them were good because they were police departments and others. Others were not. 

They’re just a hobbyist wanting to see the fires. And next thing you know, you were having impacts with small drones with aircraft and causing a lot of damage to those aircraft that were trying to fight the fires. And you’re also seeing in places like say the Super Bowl. 

Well, they’ll put a TFR or a Temporary Flight Restriction over the Super Bowl. So, aircraft don’t fly near it for security reasons. We’ve done that since 9/11 with large events like that. What about the drones and the hobbyists? And then and all the other things that are taking place around an event like that. And so I think the dual-use nature of the dual-use problem is going to help us solve this quicker for both sides. Spear, anything else on that? 

42:26 – 43:08 

(JPM): Yeah, I mean, if you look at similar technology advances, there were times when, for example, the Global Positioning System, the GPS, and specifically the receiver that you needed to figure out where you were, it used to be huge. And then you have organizations like DARPA that miniaturized it to make it more usable on the battlefield. But since then, I mean, you’ve got GPS receivers on everything to include your watch, your phone, etc. so the continued miniaturization of that, due to the commercial applications of GPS, the military now gets to take advantage of the fact that those receivers are now so much cheaper and so much smaller.  

And I think the same thing is going to happen with a lot of these technologies. So it’s really beneficial to the military and the civilian world that there’s a dual-use nature to this because it’s going to help accelerate, bring down the cost and size of all of these things.

43:09 – 43:18 

As the respective leaders of Elara Nova’s Aeronautics & Mission Systems sector, how can Elara Nova support the development and acquisition of counter-UAS technologies? 

43:19 – 45:04 

(DN):Our intention for the Aeronautics and Mission System, the AMS side of Elara Nova is to help these companies navigate, not only the government side of things and working through the innovation efforts as well as getting into programs. 

But as well as helping them tell a story about if they have a technology, where that can be used and how – present that technology, whether it’s to another company. If they’re going to be paired up with another company, or if it’s to the government or to an international partner as well. 

I think that’s one thing we do well, in AMS – is we have a lot of operational experts, and we can help them tell that story really well. We can also help them navigate, whether they’re looking for that SBIR I effort, that SBIR II effort they’re looking for. How do they get in front of the right person at the Department of War or whether that’s one of the Combatant Commanders? 

Who is that right person you need to get in front of? And when they get in front of that person, what story should they tell? And I think that’s something we’ll be very effective at.  

And then looking at the larger piece of the Golden Dome, we’re very involved with Golden Dome. I know a lot of it is on the space side. General Guetlein and his team, many of them came from the Space Force, but it is an all-domain effort. When you look at how you’re going to defend the nation and much of Golden Dome is going to be outside of the space sector, we talked a little bit about it right here about the integration with JIATF 401, the command and control networks, etc. 

Many of these small companies are coming to us with questions about Golden Dome, about how would they fit in? How could they become part of a broader consortium as part of this large-scale effort to defend the homeland? And I think we’re putting ourselves in a great position to help these companies tell their story, figure out how they can integrate, figure out how they can get funded and ultimately get into some kind of a program of record, and then proceed from there. Spear, anything else on that? 

45:05 – 45:34 

(JPM): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this counter-UAS mission poses a great question for us to figure out how the Aeronautics and Mission Systems sector can provide complementary expertise or a high quality outside look to these companies developing these technologies. I mean, these companies are already staffed with brilliant people that developed awesome technologies, and they have great operational depth. And the answer we believe that AMS can provide them with expertise that can complement and leverage the strengths they already have within their company to ultimately get capability into the hands of those that need it. 

45:35 – 46:14 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge. As a strategic advisory firm, Elara Nova is the trusted guiding partner that builds tailored teams to illuminate unseen opportunities and deliver impact across every domain.  

With the trusted insight to deliver your decisive edge, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in national security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.