September 22, 2025 • 46 mins
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🎙️ At the Boundary reaches its 100th episode with a critical conversation on one of the fastest-growing threats in modern warfare: drones. Host Jim Cardoso is joined by Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn and Molly Campbell to explore why the U.S. must urgently rethink its counter-drone strategies—before it’s too late.
From the looming risk of a Taiwan conflict to the rise of low-cost Chinese drones, this episode examines:
- Why expensive missile defenses are unsustainable against cheap drone swarms
- The need for layered defenses and operational resilience
- The role of sensors, directed energy weapons, and low-cost interceptors
If you care about national security, emerging military technology, or the U.S.’s ability to compete in great power conflict, this episode is a must-listen.
📍 Recorded at the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute (GNSI) in Tampa, Florida.
Links from the episode:
• Countering the Swarm: Protecting the Joint Force in the Drone Age
At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.
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The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jim Cardoso (00:00):
Jim, hello everyone. Welcome to this week's
(00:14):
episode of at the boundary, thepodcast from the global and
national security Institute atthe University of South Florida.
I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Directorat GNSI, and your host for at
the boundary. Today, we're proudto announce that at the boundary
reaches a significant milestone.
Our 100th episode. According toindustry data, less than 6% of
(00:36):
all podcasts reach 100 episodes.
As we celebrate thisachievement, we're also grateful
to let you know that at theboundary is among the top 10% of
all podcasts according to thepodcast search engine listen
notes, I could speak for ourentire at the boundary and GNSI
team when we say thank you forspending some time with us each
(00:58):
week since November of 2023we're looking forward to hitting
milestones for 200 episodes, 500episodes and beyond. For this
100th episode, we have two greatguests lined up. We're going to
discuss a fascinating newarticle from Dr Stacey pehn and
Molly Campbell, both with theCenter for New American
Security, titled countering theswarm, protecting the joint
(01:21):
force in the drone age. At GNSI,we've talked about drones and
other autonomous or semiautonomous systems frequently on
this podcast, also our September2023 Tampa summit was devoted to
the future and ethics ofunmanned and autonomous warfare.
So today, I look forward tospeaking directly to Stacy and
Molly about their article. Theywrite that the US must swiftly
(01:45):
and drastically alter itscounter drone strategies or risk
losing a war, say to the Chineseover Taiwan. Stacy is the
director of CNS defense program,and Molly is a research
assistant in CNS defense programas well. Stacey and Molly,
welcome to the podcast. Thanksfor having us.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (02:03):
Thanks for having us. We're excited to be
here on your 100th episode.
Jim Cardoso (02:07):
Yeah, exciting for us, too. And I mean, I really
look forward to having you, andafter reading the article as
well, it's a great way tocelebrate 200th episode. So
before we get into thespecifics, and there's a lot of
analysis going on right now innational security circles about
drones, autonomous warfare. Whatinspired you to devote the time
and the effort to put into thisreally well researched and
(02:28):
fascinating article,
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (02:31):
as Molly would say, drones have been on
the brain for a while. This is astream of research and sort of
the third publication that wehave on drones. I first wrote a
report on Ukraine, and thenMolly, Hannah Dennis and I had a
larger report called swarms overthe straight which was thinking
about offensively, how dronescould be used by China, the
(02:56):
United States and Taiwan, if theUS and China were to get in a
war over Taiwan and trying toextrapolate the lessons learned
from recent conflicts likeUkraine, Nagorno, Karabakh,
Libya, as well as Molly, did abunch of work creating a drone
proliferation data set lookingat military drones. Molly, why
(03:18):
don't you talk a little bitabout that?
Molly Campbell (03:20):
Yeah, so it tracked military drone sales,
which I called transfers,because, you know, they're not
always necessarily a directsale. Sometimes it's, you know,
illicitly acquired technologysharing, also like interest and
then failed sales, but it'sbasically 30 years of drone
proliferation data and kind ofto track who were, who are the
(03:44):
major players in the market. Ithink there was a major
narrative that China was likethe great us competitor with
military drones. But I but thedata set really showed how
Turkey and Israel, to a lesserextent, are major actors and
proliferators of militarydrones. So it's, it's been a, it
was a really cool project, andI'm hoping to maybe build on it
(04:06):
in the, you know, subsequentyears that I since it's been
published.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (04:09):
Molly's being modest, so she did all
this, all size drones, allprevious data sets, which were
great, had focused on only thebig drones, like the Reapers, of
the predators, the males andHales and she expanded it to
include all military drones. Andwhat we concluded from this is
that drones are everywhere, andeveryone's getting them. And
this data set didn't eveninclude commercial drones, which
(04:32):
are a whole nother threatvector, which any actor can get
a hold of just by going onAmazon or go to your best buy,
and buying a DJI Mavic andbringing it home and modifying
it and can use it for nefariouspurposes. So we had focused on
the potential offensive uses indrones in this prior work. And
(04:53):
then here, what we had left withwas that drones are going to be
everywhere. We need to really.
Be thinking hard about how we'regonna defend against them,
because China, in particular,has one of the largest and most
active drone programs in theworld, and dominates the
commercial drone market.
Jim Cardoso (05:10):
Yeah, you know. And you, you know, you 3035, years,
1995 1990 whatever I mean, I wasin the I ended the Air Force in
1988 and I retired in 2018 30years. And I was on a separate
podcast called tipping Spearsabout two weeks ago, and she
asked me, What is one of themajor things you've seen change
over your career? And one thingI said was drones and autonomous
(05:32):
warfare. When I came in in 1988we weren't even thinking about
that. I'm sure there's some Rand D going on that area, but it
really wasn't until late 90s,and obviously after 911 that's
when things just reallyexploded. They became
ubiquitous. But even, like yousaid, the con it was, the
discussion was more about as anAir Force guy, MQ ones, MQ
(05:53):
nines. And now it's a completelydifferent discussion with that
addition, like you said, of thecommercial activity, which can
be then used for dual use, formilitary purposes. So one thing
too, I think that the I pulledfrom the article we talked about
a little bit about thisyesterday, as we kind of had a
(06:13):
had a chat, is kind of the, Iwould say, the offensive
prioritization you've seen inthe past, and really now what
your article focused on is thedefensive needs, which maybe
aren't getting as resourced aswell. Can you talk to that?
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (06:29):
I'll let Molly talk to the specifics on
the resourcing. But in general,I think you've seen this. The
big lesson learned people aretaking from Ukraine is drones
are important. We need to havedrones and thinking about how we
can use them to better go outand attack the enemy, whether
it's making you know your groundbased fires, your artillery
shells, your rockets moreaccurate by just providing up to
(06:53):
date targeting information, orif it's actually directly
attacking them with the one wayattack drones that the first
person view little kamikazes, orthe longer range first attack
drones like the Shah heads thathave seemed to be everywhere
now. And you know, theDepartment of Defense Secretary
(07:14):
HEG says, issued his unleashingdrone dominance, which sounds
very offensive minded, andcertainly is. But then they
recently issued an order toestablish a new task force, a
joint task force for a one thatis going to be focused on drone
defense. And you know, this is avery welcome development, I
(07:36):
think, in our view, but thedevil's always in the details in
terms of what they actually do,because there have been prior
organizations that have beenfocused on countering small
drones and Molly can tell you alittle bit about what we've been
spending our money on and why itis insufficient due to the
(07:59):
growing threat. Yeah.
Molly Campbell (08:01):
So the US investment in countering drones
kind of dates back to the globalwar on terror, unsurprisingly,
in the Operation InherentResolve. So with the liberation
of Mosul, when ISIS first usedsmall I think that believe DJI
commercial drones to drop bombson us advisors and Iraqi forces
(08:21):
in the city and guide one wayexplosive vehicles. And it
really was this kind ofwatershed moment in which the US
could not counter this threat.
And they really came, they had,they came up with, you know,
they mounted a jammer onto aonto a truck and drove it around
the city, and that wasultimately how they figured out
how to counter it. But, youknow, reading firsthand accounts
(08:43):
of that, it was this reallyscary moment that the Iraqi
forces wouldn't go into thecity, and that kind of
galvanized at least in CENTCOM,and the idea like, oh, this
could, like, really suppress ourforces. So Jido, the joint
Improvised Explosive DeviceDefeat Organization, which is
again focused on the IED threat,was kind of given the COAs
(09:04):
mission because, again, it waskind of more seen in that vein
of rogue actors using this kindof improvisational technology.
And they got a joint UrgentOperational need funding. They
used OCO funding to kind ofsurge, more conventional,
conventional air defensesystems, but also some more
(09:25):
innovative solutions. So theland based, land based phalanx
weapon system, which is the seawas mounted onto a truck, you
know, proved really effective atcountering the small drones to
shoot them down. But overall,you know, so there was a huge
spike in spending about in 2018but a lot of that money was
still spent on traditional airdefense for so pack three
(09:47):
interceptors for the Patriotsystem. And not a lot was kind
of forward looking at to how arethese drones going to be used in
future iterations? And. Notnecessarily by a non state
actor. What could this mean,like in a large scale war? And
so there's a major spike afterthat, and then a lull covid, you
(10:07):
know, things were not beingfunded as much. And then the war
in Ukraine, once again, I think,as Stacey alluded to, really
brought this into relief, thatthis is a large scale modern
threat. And part of what didhappen in 2018 was some R and D
investment and some purposebuilt cus technology. So that's
like the coyote missileinterceptor and some of the more
(10:31):
mobile, short range air defensesystems that the Army and the
Marine Corps have. And aroundthe same time that Ukraine is
happening, some of these R and Dinvestments are coming to
fruition and beginning tofruition and beginning to be
procured and fielded. However,it's still an incredibly small
numbers, and it's not sufficientfor the scale of the threat that
we will see in the future. So,and it's also they're based on
(10:54):
antiquity, antiquated systemssuch as like the stinger. A lot
of these systems are based onthe Stinger, which is not very
effective against drones, thoughit's what we have. So there was
a little bit of using existingsystems and kind of creating
these hodgepodge short range airdefenses to apply them against
drones, with some limitedinvestment in purpose built
(11:18):
systems. But again, C, U S isoften kind of grouped in with
the broader air defense mission,and that consumes a lot of the
spending with likereconstituting army, shorad,
major really expensiveinterceptors, in the case of the
Navy, with the SMS,
Jim Cardoso (11:36):
well, you talk about one thing you brought up
there, which actually I'mcurious about, because you
talked about the a lot of, a lotof focus on the ad mission, the
ad forces. And one takeaway, asI read through the article, and
you, you guys, you hit it up aswell in the article, is that
counter drone is not an adproblem. It's an everybody
(11:59):
problem. And you know, you sortof Molly, you sort of
highlighted the fact a lot oftimes the spending goes, okay.
We need to do these things forad forces. But, I mean, you
illustrate throughout thearticle at pepper, you know, it
kind of filters to the wholething that now counter Joan is
something we need to think aboutacross our entire joint force
and even across our our partnernation forces as well. Can you
kind of talk about that a littlebit.
Molly Campbell (12:21):
Yeah, I think the spending that went towards
So, like so like handheld to UASsystems, it really didn't start
until 2022 2023 it's been a veryrecent, very modest investments,
as they kind of dabble indifferent handheld systems,
different like soldierprotection. And I think that is
(12:41):
where the army, for example, ismoving. I think the Marine Corps
is more that's more inherent totheir force structure, to have a
little more defending theindividual unit versus dedicated
air defense,
Jim Cardoso (12:53):
but more mobility too. I mean, you know, they're
gonna they pride themselves onbeing more mobile. You know, as
part of their overall
Molly Campbell (13:00):
army is a bit more siloed, but they're moving
towards that. But I think thatthat's something that's come up
a lot, and, you know, right?
There's individual protection interms of having these handheld
systems that are often onlyreally effective against group
one and two drones, right?
They're like handheld jammers,or maybe it's an enhanced,
(13:21):
enhanced buckshot, for example,to shoot down a drone with a
with your rifle. Um, but that'ssomething we do, you know, kind
of find is we need more of this,like small level, mobile point
defense, to defend, you know,the force,
Jim Cardoso (13:37):
yeah, yeah. No, that, that's, that's good. And
Stacey, I don't have anything toadd to that or,
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (13:42):
I mean, Molly hit on the key points. I
think that you see that the armyrecognized the threat, and the
Joint Force did, but not reallythe scale of it, that everybody,
any adversary, is going to havedrones, then you're going to
have to protect everyone, andthat means that air defense
units, even with the Armyexpanding that that sort of
(14:05):
specialty within the whole forceis going to be inadequate, and
one of the most common sensesolutions, because guns are
ubiquitous. All troops havedifferent types of guns. Most
vehicles do for ground forcesare gun based defenses, and that
the Ukrainians have used them togreat effect to take down the
shaheds. And if you take a gunand create some purpose built
(14:31):
ammunition that has a proximityfuse, so it creates an air burst
and it's more likely to hit avery small drone, perhaps
provide it with a littleguidance, it can be really,
really effective, still verycheap, and you just need to have
either a laser designator orhook it up to a radar. And you
can create your own spag, yourown mobile gun, and having those
(14:53):
that are accompanying groundtroops, and then, you know,
personalized versions of them, Ithink, is going. Be necessary
for all of the services the AirForce is gonna have to worry
about its base defenses. TheNavy already has dealt with a
lot of drones and has realizedthat while the Aegis defenses
(15:14):
that the fleet has arefantastic, they are optimized
for a high end threat, and thatthere is a gap sort of between
the ccwis and their standardmissiles. And that, you know,
improving the and using the fiveinch cannon more means they can
intercept the threats fartheraway. But they need, they need
(15:36):
some more of those purpose builtcounter drone defenses.
Jim Cardoso (15:41):
Yeah, no doubt. You know, on a side note, I, you
know, I see GNSI here. We're ata university, and sometimes I
catch a lot of griefers when Iuse military acronyms. And just
listening to you too, it's like,okay, I understand what you're
saying. But around here, a lotof people wouldn't understand
what you're saying. Good stuff,though. Back to the article. So,
you know your article, it sortof breaks down the counter drone
(16:03):
issue into three main buckets,and investment for the
department to make, for currentdrone threats, investment to
make for future drone threats,and then overall recommendations
and all these. Now you presentall of them in kind of a need to
do now urgency to them, butsince it's right kind of in our
national face, let's discuss,first, what needs to be done
(16:27):
about today's threats that youknow to what? What do we need to
do really right now to counterthings that are that are basing
us on the current battlefield?
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (16:36):
Sure, so we focused on overseas, because
counter homeland defense is adifferent problem set, given the
authorities are different andthe type of weapons you would
want to use. And I think it'shelpful to talk a little bit
about what the Army and the Navyhave been doing from 2023 since
Israel ended up invading Gazaand about mid 2025, this year
(17:01):
for the Navy in terms ofdefeating drones, because the
army was under continuous attackfor about six months, the bases
that they were stationed at inSyria and Iraq, and then the
Navy has been operating in theRed Sea and Houthis, which are
proxy Iranian forces in Yemenhad been attacking commercial
(17:23):
shipping in the Red Sea inresponse to Israel's actions,
and the Navy came in to try todefend these ships and to defend
itself, because they came underattack. And so there's been a
lot of experience recently inshooting down drones, and all
props to the Army, the Navy andthe Air Force who've been
(17:46):
involved in this, becausethey've done a great job. It's
pretty astonishing. The successrate that all of the forces have
had in terms of no drone has hitus. Ships, the army, forces that
were not trained or specializedair defense, or air defenders,
shut down 80% of the more than100 drones fired at them. But
(18:08):
these operations havehighlighted some real problems
and limitations to the currentapproach. Number one is the fact
that the US doesn't have enoughsensors optimized to find
drones. So one of the hardthings about drones is they're
small and they're they fly sortof slow and low, and most of the
equipment the military has isfocused on finding fast flight
(18:31):
or jets or missiles. And so thedrones are hard to see, and you
have to see them before you cando anything about determining
whether it is a threat, and thentrying to stop it, you can
either shoot it down, maybe youjam it, you screw up its control
link or its navigation system,or, you know, otherwise, disrupt
(18:53):
its operations, so they needmore sensors to deal with that.
The other factors that reallyplayed in were inadequate
numbers of interceptors, ofaffordable interceptors the army
was like shuffling around frombase to base, and they were only
able to do this because it was areally otherwise permissive
(19:14):
environment. You know, theyweren't under attack in Iraq and
Syria, other than these one waydrone attacks, which occurred
almost every day, but it wasonly a couple of drones every
day, so it was a pretty modestthreat. And that's true for the
Navy too. The Navy's realproblem is they've got a great
air defense system, but they'refiring off, you know, missiles
(19:34):
that cost five to $30 million toshoot down a drone that costs
$50,000 and that's just notsustainable. It's not cost
effective, and it's wasting theinventory of really valuable
weapons that we should beconserving for greater threats
and more priority threats likeChina or Russia. So using like
(19:56):
the Standard Missile six toshoot down a drone is just.
That's not what you want to bedoing, and going forward, it
it's, I think there's a real is,or maybe there isn't a
realization, but Molly and Irealized that the type of threat
that the US has been facing inthe Middle East was pretty low,
and our forces did really well,and it was still unexpected and
(20:19):
hard and something they hadn'tbeen prepped for before they
were deployed. But you'realready seeing the threat grow
in terms of what the number ofdrones Russia is firing into
Ukraine on any given day or inany given raid or salvo. You
know, it's hundreds, 500 800that would really quickly
exhaust us supplies ofinterceptors and overwhelm air
(20:43):
defenses. So we need to beprepared for the threat to grow
pretty significantly in the nearterm. And that's why you have to
find cost effective solutions.
And they're looking at thisacross the force, in addition to
the guns, you know, improvingthe ammunition for the Navy's
five inch cannon, specificammunition for different ground
(21:04):
vehicles. You also have counterdrone, drones that are out
there, and like the Air Force,started using it a rocket
instead of an air to air missileto intercept the drones, because
a lot of the ones have been shotdown by fighter aircraft, either
Air Force or navy, who have goneout, and the missiles are still
(21:24):
pretty expensive. So, yeah,
Jim Cardoso (21:30):
no, that, I mean, you know, I some some takeaways
from, from that's great answer,you know, sort of the IFF the
Identification Friend or foe.
You kind of talked about howit's sort of a manual process,
and I think we'll get into a bitlater that that's going to have
to that that's gonna have tochange as well, just the cost of
defenses, shooting half amillion dollar missiles at at,
you know, drones that are a100th of that cost. And you
(21:51):
know, you quoted from the battleof the Red Sea. You quoted a
navy leader said, Well, if it'sdefending our people doesn't
matter. The cost doesn't matter.
And, okay, yes, I agree. Untilthe cost is so overwhelming
because they're shootinghundreds of drones at you, then
it does matter at a point. Andthen you have to make risk
(22:13):
assessment decisions as well.
And then, you know, like, like Isaid, Well, Molly and I
realized, and hopefully morepeople realize too, by listening
to this and reading yourarticle, that you know this the
way we've operated, with one totwo drones maybe be shotting at
us, shot us per day or or oneper hour, anything like that.
That's not going to compare tohundreds of drones coming out
(22:35):
our forces in a future fight.
Molly Campbell (22:39):
So go ahead, please add that. I mean, in the
case of the Army, it wasn'twithout injury and loss of life
to US forces right three USforces lost their lives at Tower
22 and there's been, there's aninnumerable amount of like,
traumatic brain injuries fromwhen drones have made impact.
And again, this is just from avery modest threat, like, you
(23:00):
know, a threat you need torespect, but still very modest
compared to what's being seen inUkraine.
Jim Cardoso (23:05):
Yeah, oh yeah, what's in Ukraine, and what we
can kind of prognosticate what'sgoing to be seen in the future
as well. And in fact, you know,turning to that, your article
talks about that. So we've, youknow, talks about the, you know,
how US invests for the currentdrone threat, but then you also
talk about how the US investsfor the future drone threat, and
sometimes the US we like ourexotic solutions to problems,
(23:27):
but some of the technology isimportant to be brought to bear
towards the future drone threat,as you've already alluded to.
Can you kind of talk a littlebit more about that future drone
threat and where we need towhere we need to invest
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (23:39):
sure all of the drones we've been talking
about thus far, and the types ofattacks, even the huge ones,
like Russia's launching prettyfrequently into Ukraine, are
autonomous drones. But they'renot autonomous really swarming
drones in that they'recommunicating independently with
each other and modifying theirbehavior. So to me, a real swarm
(24:02):
involves autonomouscollaboration, where the
collective optimizes itsbehavior to achieve its mission,
and that's going to be even moredifficult to defeat. And we've
seen that China is investing alot in swarming technology. The
Ukrainians and the Russians areas well. The Ukrainians
reportedly have made someadvances in this area, sort of
(24:25):
modest steps, not fullyautonomous swarms recently, and
before we know it, there will betruly autonomous drone swarms
that will be even harder todefeat, in addition to just
massive raids and salvos beingfired, and that's where the US
needs to be thinking about usingtechnology to help to defend
(24:50):
itself, because most of thesolutions that exist today, with
the exception of like jamming,which typically will work
against commercial drones andsome military. Drones. But there
are different ways that you canrespond to that and make your
drone less vulnerable tojamming. Are take out one drone
(25:12):
at a time. So right? You have tofind it. You find it in the sky,
you engage it, you shoot it, andit falls down. And you have to
do all of that in a really,really compressed timeframe, so
30 seconds to a couple minutes,and that's likely going to
shorten even more if you'regoing to have to be re aiming to
engage multiple drones veryquick, in very quick succession.
(25:35):
Due to that fact, the US is,there's it will need layered
defenses so they can sort ofthin out the size of the attack,
but some are probably going toget through and this is where
something like directed energyweapons could be really useful,
especially high poweredmicrowaves that essentially fry
the electronics of everything inits area. They're really short
(25:57):
range, they can potentially frythe electronics of things you
don't want them to damage ordestroy, but they're kind of
like your last layer in yourforce field, and they are the
only sort of defeat mechanismthat can take out an entire
swarm. And they've shown goodpromise in testing. By
(26:19):
comparison, I think the USmilitary Molly's analysis shows
has invested a lot more inlasers, which is another form of
directed energy. Those are stillyou have to aim and then train
the laser shooter, yeah, andkeep it there for a while,
because sometimes it takes alittle bit to burn through it
and actually damage it. Andthose haven't performed nearly
(26:41):
as well when they've beendeployed in the field. They've
had a lot of problems because ofweather, because of just
atmospheric sand, dust disruptsthem.
Jim Cardoso (26:50):
Lasers overall, have not really, in my opinion,
have not really played out theway we sort of envisioned they
would 10 or 20 years ago.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (26:58):
Yeah, I don't, I don't think they have.
And so we we argue that HPMseems like the more promising
tech. And then the other pieceis actually, as we're talking
about the threat becomes fullyat autonomous and collaborating
the US needs to be integratingmore artificial intelligence in
(27:18):
its command and control networkand its battle management to
speed up its process ofidentifying a threat, engaging
it, and using AI algorithms thatcan, you know, verify that this
is a threat and be drone thatand do it really, really quickly
and faster than humans can, sothat they can keep up and
(27:41):
actually knock most of themdown.
Jim Cardoso (27:43):
Yeah, it seems that AI, that one, the military does
seem to understand the theimportance of AI for a variety
of functions and operationalcapabilities. The high power
microwave, that's the one. And Ifound it interesting, and you
said it again, and it reallyleft out a left up the pages as
well, the articles. That'sreally the only one that can
(28:03):
defeat the swarm, that can do,you know, a broad range of
because everything else ispretty much point and shoot, and
you're not going to defeat aswarm that way. And look,
there's some terms. I waswriting these terms down.
There's some terms that probablymake people uncomfortable. You
know, the autonomous, swarming,collaborative, the collective,
people kind of probably freakout a little bit when little bit
when they hear that, but that'swhere this is going, and we need
(28:25):
to understand that and be ableto take some type of activity in
those layered defenses, as yousay, far out, medium, closer in,
so that we can just, you know,sort you know, reduce this,
reduce the swarm As it comes in,so that finally, at the end,
it's, it hopefully is of minimaldamage to our to our forces
(28:46):
fielded Molly, before you looklike you had something you were
looking at.
Molly Campbell (28:50):
I think what's interesting is, on the on the
lasers note, Israel just hadtheir iron beam testing. So
there is some, and they do statethat they're allegedly This is a
it's more hardy againstenvironmental factors. So I just
thought that was interesting,that perhaps there is some more
mature laser technology that theUS has not yet despite the
(29:11):
millions of millions invested.
But the point about swarmingstill exists, and that this is
still like laser still has theissue of dwell time and re
aiming that makes it ineffectiveagainst swarms.
Jim Cardoso (29:25):
Oh yeah, I'm just, like I said, lasers in general.
I I'm a, you know, AF sockSpecial Operations most of my
career. And they always, wealways thought putting a laser
on a c1 30, an AC 130 gunshiplaser, was going to be the way
to go. And they've been workingon and working on and working
on, and they they still haven'tfigured out even the most
(29:45):
current AC 130 the you know, thewhiskey model, or the J model.
I'm sorry, it's still prettymuch all just kind of old
fashioned kinetics, so no de onthere. Yet, they still haven't
quite figured that out.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (29:58):
Jim, if I can jump. In on one point you
made about autonomy and makingpeople uncomfortable. And I
agree, and you know, we haveserious concerns about some
types of autonomy where you havea fully autonomous weapon system
that goes out, figures out whatit wants to strike, determines
that something is a target andengages it without any human
oversight. But there are a lotof more sort of founded forms of
(30:23):
autonomy that already existtoday in many weapons, as I'm
sure you you know, and inparticular in the air defense
systems like the patriot andAegis, they have autonomous
engagement capability becausethey have to, because the speed
of decision making has to be sofast. And the same is true for
(30:43):
counter drone defenses. I thinkon the offensive side, there are
autonomous drones, but they'rereally sort of cruise missiles
that are pre programmed andflying to a certain point we are
going to, I think, see moresophisticated forms of autonomy,
whether we want it or not,because there is an operational
imperative. You see this on thebattlefield in Ukraine with all
(31:05):
the jamming. There are twodifferent solutions. One, really
low tech. You go to a wireguided drone, which the Russians
started doing and have usedquite effectively, but that has
some fairly serious limitationsand drawbacks. And the other
side is at least autonomousautonomous terminal guidance.
And that's not a fullyautonomous drone. It just takes
(31:26):
it sort of the last mile. Andwhen I was in Ukraine, I saw a
number of different companiesthat were developing this last
mile systems, which were sentessentially a module you put
over the camera of the drone,and the operator clicks on a
pixel, so it's essentially apixel lock, and then the drone
is going to continue its flight.
If it's severed and the operatorloses control of it, it goes to
(31:50):
that pixel. It's not at allsophisticated, but the
operational environment is goingto, I think, push towards the
autonomy due to the countersthat people use. It's a cat and
mouse game.
Jim Cardoso (32:05):
Yeah, you have to do it that. I mean, that
capability you just described isnot very different from Lost
link procedures they use on anMQ nine right now. A lot of
similarities there, and that'swhich they have been doing for
1520, years already. So, yeah,things are just moving so fast
here that we need to acceptthese advanced capabilities and
(32:29):
incorporated them, because ouradversaries certainly aren't
wringing their hands wonderingwhether this is a good idea or
bad idea or not. And we need tobe able to defend against that,
and we need to be able tooffensively employ as well. And
then we'll see, you know, we'llsee more about, you know,
collaborative combat aircraft.
Ccaas are becoming a big thingnow. It's another discussion we
may have someday. But today'sabout counter drone. So
continuing discussion aboutcounter drone, um, you hit on
(32:50):
this already, but I want tocircle back to it, because you
devote two you have six chaptersand two chapters, 33% of your
articles about those. There'stwo case studies, you know, the
army, counter drone operation,Middle East, the Navy, the
Navy's and the Air Force ofbattle, of the of the of the of
the Red Sea. We're not going toget into details of that,
(33:12):
because we're trying to keepthis at about 30 minutes, like
we do with all our at theboundaries even our 100th
episode. But people need to diveinto the article and see, see
some of those details of thelessons learned. You've touched
them already, but I want tocircle back just ensure there's
nothing else that kind of comesto mind that you want to talk
about, some key pieces from someteasers, if you will, to those
(33:33):
two lessons learned that readerscan then dive into when they
download your articlethemselves.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (33:41):
Two things, one from each case. So
for the army, the story is afairly human one. It's focusing
on one of the brigades that wasdeployed, the second BCT of the
10th Mountain Division. And Ithink that leadership played a
really important role here. Andsort of there had been a few
drones shot at the prior unitthat had been deployed, and so
(34:05):
they had prepped for it, butnothing on the scale at which
the second brigade faced duringits deployment, and but those
preparations helped, and theyhad to delegate A lot of
authorities down and empowerjunior soldiers, because it was
folks who are at isolatedlocations who had to make these
(34:26):
decisions to shoot down ordrones really quickly. And they
experimented with a lot of tech,and, you know, learned a lot in
the process, but that was reallyimportant there on the Navy
side, you know, the Navy didn'thave any leakers that hit ships
(34:47):
or American naval ships, butwhat you see is that they were
operating pretty continuouslyfor a year and a half or so, and
that really seems to have wornthe fleet down. Was having the
stress and being prepared for aninbound threat with pretty short
notice was something that endedup leading, or at least
(35:10):
contributing to some accidentsthat happened because there were
three fighter aircraft that werelost. One was a friendly fire
incident, so it was shot, Ithink, by a cruiser or
destroyer, I forget which onefell off, the carrier slid off
and one crashed. And so I thinkthere is an element of what we
(35:31):
would call a Fabian strategy ofexhaustion, where the enemy
isn't actually going to be ableto defeat you and even
necessarily harm you, but theyreally can wear you down and
deplete your resources in termsof missiles, air defense,
missiles and interceptors, butwear down your people over time,
because you never know whenyou're going to need to respond.
(35:53):
Molly, do you have anything elseyou wanted to
Jim Cardoso (35:57):
Yeah, that's, you know. It's, it's, you know, it
is interesting. I drew that outtoo, and I really appreciate
that how you talked about a lotof the Human Factors still
matter. I mean, the technologyis important, but the and both
those are and both those casestudies, and you just hit on
those Stacy is the human factorsof how the technology is going
to be employed, and also justgood old fashioned things like,
(36:19):
like leadership and empowermentof subordinates and and fatigue
and stress levels. You know, Ithink that some of the
technology that we employ, youknow, in terms of command and
control, things like that, aregoing to have to mitigate those
human factors that have existedsince the beginning of warfare
and haven't changed any over theover the the Eon, since we
(36:39):
started, since we startedthrowing rocks at each other. So
we're starting to come towardsthe end of the episode. So you
right at the beginning of yourarticle, you have and you talked
about it through the article wasthe overall recommendations to
the department, kind of the youlist the big three. So you know,
as we're starting to wind down,can you describe them for our
listeners again, to give them alittle teaser to dive in and
(37:02):
learn more about them.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (37:03):
Sure, our biggest recommendation is that
US forces need to beoperationally resilient. And
that seems like a sort of arcaneterms, but it means that you can
be under attack and continue toconduct whatever your task is or
your mission is, and resilienceis going to require the type of
active defenses we talked about,where you have guns or missiles
(37:24):
that can shoot down incomingthreats, but it also requires
protective measures. Sosometimes it is simple things
like passive defenses, having ahardened bunker that people can
go hide in, distributing peopleand equipment like aircraft
across the base, don't park themnext to each other, because then
they're more vulnerable, andthat makes the task harder. If,
(37:48):
even if you're facing somethinglike the spider's web attack
that the Ukrainians launched onRussian air bases, if your
aircraft are spread out, it'sharder to hit all of them. So
resilience is really important,and it requires both passive and
active defenses. And those thepassive defenses are really
modest investments, but thedepartment always seems
(38:12):
reluctant to make them, and itwill help oftentimes, against
higher end threats too, like themissile the missile threats that
the US is likely to face in anytheater. We think they need more
low cost interceptors, largestockpiles. So you know what it
really comes down to? We've seenhow bad the department is in
(38:35):
terms of stockpiling largenumbers of its high end
missiles. It needs cheaperthings, and it needs to buy a
lot of them. And hopefully thismight involve Congress
authorizing multi yearprocurement, so you can put a
big order for multiple years,and industry knows and they'll
expand their production capacityand you can buy them. But I
(38:56):
think guns, rockets, sort ofthose low end things are a big
part of it. Some of them mightbe the new tech, like HP, like
high powered microwaves.
Jim Cardoso (39:05):
Well, you talked about training as well. I mean,
just like counter for counterdrone training and kind of
expanding that, again, beyondjust the air defense folks and
also testing. I mean, some ofthe basic stuffs of training and
testing are a big deal that andyou, you know, articulate some,
some examples, especially thetesting side, which is not very
(39:26):
robust, it seems.
Molly Campbell (39:27):
Yeah, I can talk about the testing. So some, when
we talk to some of the secondBCT folks that were out in the
Middle East, they talked about,you know, they were given a few
developmental systems that were,you know, in low rate of
production that had not beenreally thoroughly tested in the
homeland, because there's thismattering of restrictions,
(39:50):
particularly on directed energy,on EW and even just on kinetic
testing at ranges around theUnited States. So they just
weren't really. Thoroughlytested. They were used against
assembly drones that weren'thardened. So they really, there
was kind of a false confidencein the developers and in even
the force giving them thesecapabilities that when they put
them against, you know, Orionmade drones, yes, they are
(40:14):
cheap, but they are still fairlyeffective, and they are military
grade weapons that they justdidn't, they weren't up to
snuff. And that that, you know,is a risk if we're, you know,
spending a lot of money todevelop and test products that
then when we put out and givethem to the warfighter, aren't
effective. So that was kind of abig recommendation that we had,
(40:35):
of like, we need to think abouthow we intensify testing
conditions? And I mean, I thinkwe're also like modifying that
recommendation to give tocongressional leaders so, you
know, see how different domesticregulations can be shifted, how
they can work with the new taskforce, to kind of maybe have a
(40:58):
purpose UAS testing facility,and that was in head success
memo, I believe, to find a, youknow, or identify a purpose cuas
testing range. So there aresteps towards this. And even
folks from industry say, like,yeah, we want to test these more
rigorously, so that, you know,our soldiers aren't out there up
(41:20):
a creek without a paddle. But sothey're like, oh, this should be
great. And then it's, you know,ineffective, and then
Jim Cardoso (41:25):
it's not great, yeah? I mean, you need to test
time. It's, it can be achallenge, though, sometimes
there's limited range, time,limited capability, yeah, but
it's, it's necessary. I mean,you make that very clear in the
article. So as we sort of thethe quarter in our jukebox, to
use another antiquated phrase,starts to run out, uh, besides
another PSA, to read the fullarticle, which I've made and
I'll make again. Any finalthoughts from both you before we
(41:46):
click off, Molly, I'll startwith you. Any final thoughts?
Molly Campbell (41:50):
Yeah, I think just that, you know, in many
ways, cuas isn't unique in termsof, when you think of it from
like the budget and bureaucraticside, like a lot of different
missions are impacted by lack ofproduction, you know, not being
scaled at the rate necessary,and that the forces are just
generally ill equipped, youknow, so that this is still kind
(42:12):
of victim to the bureaucracy ofthe Department of Defense, but
that this threat is, I isperhaps less considered as much,
I think, just in the from thedefensive capacity, and that
there are these less glamoroussolutions, such as passive
defenses, like nets, camo,decoys, things that you know
(42:34):
aren't, again, a very exquisite,um, high end solution, but that
can be really effective atsaving American lives that, you
know, maybe we need to look backat some what, what do we have,
and how can we build on what wehave to be effective in the
short term, and, you know, evenin the long term, I think that's
my, my main That's
Jim Cardoso (42:55):
a great thought.
Whatever works, right, we needto employ that. Some of it's
going to be exotic systems. Someit's going to be very simple,
but we need to look at and findthe thing that does work, and
just consider that. Stacey, anyfinal thoughts from you before
we end the podcast?
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (43:08):
Just to expand on some of the points
Molly made, a little bit, Iagree completely we need this
high, low mix. I think that, andI firmly believe drones are
going to be this threat, andthey are a growing threat, but
it's and it's going to mean thatUS forces are going to face more
risk. It's because suddenlyadversaries have an ability to
(43:30):
fairly accurately strike the USfrom long distances, and they
didn't used to have that. Sothat's just a fact of life now,
and not something we canreverse, but the counter drone
threat right now, it's notimpossible. The US has done
really well in situations whereit didn't have the right
weapons, the right sensors, orwell trained forces yet in place
(43:53):
and capitalizing on ouradvantage in personnel and then
equipping them and preparingthem for this. You know, it's
not going to be dire if we takethe steps that we really need to
and can, because so many of thesolutions are readily available
right now and are not, you know,cost prohibitive. The US just
(44:18):
needs to actually do it and takeit seriously.
Jim Cardoso (44:22):
That about wraps it up. Stacy Molly, thank you so
much for your time today. Ireally enjoyed our conversation.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (44:28):
Thanks for having us. Thank you for having
us. Special.
Jim Cardoso (44:31):
Thanks to our guests today, Dr Stacy pettje on
and Molly Campbell from theCenter for New American
Security. Stacey is the directorof cnsi defense program, and
Molly is a research assistant inthat program. We really enjoyed
talking to them today abouttheir new article, countering
the swarm, protecting the jointforce in the drone age, which is
freely available on the CNSsite. Next week, on the podcast,
(44:55):
our guests will be GNSI ResearchFellow, Dr Guido Rossi, and Dr
Matthew Ford. From the SwedishDefense University in Stockholm,
they'll have an in depthdiscussion about something
that'll seem as far away fromhigh tech autonomous weapon
systems as you can get the USArmy's standard issue rifle. The
army is on the verge of changingit, and you may be surprised to
(45:17):
discover that the effects ofthat change are far reaching and
a little controversial Tune innext week to discover why.
Thanks for listening today.
We're glad you could share sometime with us on this milestone,
100th episode of at theboundary. We hope you stick
around for the next 100 as wellas we progress down that path,
you can follow along with GNSIand our LinkedIn next accounts
(45:37):
at USF underscore GNSI And checkout our website as well at
usf.edu/gnsi, while you'rethere, subscribe to our monthly
newsletter to keep up witheverything we're doing at GNSI.
That'sgoing to wrap up this episode of
(45:58):
at the boundary. Each newepisode will feature global and
national security issues wefound to be insightful,
intriguing, maybe controversial,but overall, just worth talking
about. I'm Jim Cardoso, andwe'll see you at the boundary.
You.
Jim, hello everyone. Welcome to this week's
(00:14):
episode of at the boundary, thepodcast from the global and
national security Institute atthe University of South Florida.
I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Directorat GNSI, and your host for at
the boundary. Today, we're proudto announce that at the boundary
reaches a significant milestone.
Our 100th episode. According toindustry data, less than 6% of
(00:36):
all podcasts reach 100 episodes.
As we celebrate thisachievement, we're also grateful
to let you know that at theboundary is among the top 10% of
all podcasts according to thepodcast search engine listen
notes, I could speak for ourentire at the boundary and GNSI
team when we say thank you forspending some time with us each
(00:58):
week since November of 2023we're looking forward to hitting
milestones for 200 episodes, 500episodes and beyond. For this
100th episode, we have two greatguests lined up. We're going to
discuss a fascinating newarticle from Dr Stacey pehn and
Molly Campbell, both with theCenter for New American
Security, titled countering theswarm, protecting the joint
(01:21):
force in the drone age. At GNSI,we've talked about drones and
other autonomous or semiautonomous systems frequently on
this podcast, also our September2023 Tampa summit was devoted to
the future and ethics ofunmanned and autonomous warfare.
So today, I look forward tospeaking directly to Stacy and
Molly about their article. Theywrite that the US must swiftly
(01:45):
and drastically alter itscounter drone strategies or risk
losing a war, say to the Chineseover Taiwan. Stacy is the
director of CNS defense program,and Molly is a research
assistant in CNS defense programas well. Stacey and Molly,
welcome to the podcast. Thanksfor having us.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (02:03):
Thanks for having us. We're excited to be
here on your 100th episode.
Jim Cardoso (02:07):
Yeah, exciting for us, too. And I mean, I really
look forward to having you, andafter reading the article as
well, it's a great way tocelebrate 200th episode. So
before we get into thespecifics, and there's a lot of
analysis going on right now innational security circles about
drones, autonomous warfare. Whatinspired you to devote the time
and the effort to put into thisreally well researched and
(02:28):
fascinating article,
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (02:31):
as Molly would say, drones have been on
the brain for a while. This is astream of research and sort of
the third publication that wehave on drones. I first wrote a
report on Ukraine, and thenMolly, Hannah Dennis and I had a
larger report called swarms overthe straight which was thinking
about offensively, how dronescould be used by China, the
(02:56):
United States and Taiwan, if theUS and China were to get in a
war over Taiwan and trying toextrapolate the lessons learned
from recent conflicts likeUkraine, Nagorno, Karabakh,
Libya, as well as Molly, did abunch of work creating a drone
proliferation data set lookingat military drones. Molly, why
(03:18):
don't you talk a little bitabout that?
Molly Campbell (03:20):
Yeah, so it tracked military drone sales,
which I called transfers,because, you know, they're not
always necessarily a directsale. Sometimes it's, you know,
illicitly acquired technologysharing, also like interest and
then failed sales, but it'sbasically 30 years of drone
proliferation data and kind ofto track who were, who are the
(03:44):
major players in the market. Ithink there was a major
narrative that China was likethe great us competitor with
military drones. But I but thedata set really showed how
Turkey and Israel, to a lesserextent, are major actors and
proliferators of militarydrones. So it's, it's been a, it
was a really cool project, andI'm hoping to maybe build on it
(04:06):
in the, you know, subsequentyears that I since it's been
published.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (04:09):
Molly's being modest, so she did all
this, all size drones, allprevious data sets, which were
great, had focused on only thebig drones, like the Reapers, of
the predators, the males andHales and she expanded it to
include all military drones. Andwhat we concluded from this is
that drones are everywhere, andeveryone's getting them. And
this data set didn't eveninclude commercial drones, which
(04:32):
are a whole nother threatvector, which any actor can get
a hold of just by going onAmazon or go to your best buy,
and buying a DJI Mavic andbringing it home and modifying
it and can use it for nefariouspurposes. So we had focused on
the potential offensive uses indrones in this prior work. And
(04:53):
then here, what we had left withwas that drones are going to be
everywhere. We need to really.
Be thinking hard about how we'regonna defend against them,
because China, in particular,has one of the largest and most
active drone programs in theworld, and dominates the
commercial drone market.
Jim Cardoso (05:10):
Yeah, you know. And you, you know, you 3035, years,
1995 1990 whatever I mean, I wasin the I ended the Air Force in
1988 and I retired in 2018 30years. And I was on a separate
podcast called tipping Spearsabout two weeks ago, and she
asked me, What is one of themajor things you've seen change
over your career? And one thingI said was drones and autonomous
(05:32):
warfare. When I came in in 1988we weren't even thinking about
that. I'm sure there's some Rand D going on that area, but it
really wasn't until late 90s,and obviously after 911 that's
when things just reallyexploded. They became
ubiquitous. But even, like yousaid, the con it was, the
discussion was more about as anAir Force guy, MQ ones, MQ
(05:53):
nines. And now it's a completelydifferent discussion with that
addition, like you said, of thecommercial activity, which can
be then used for dual use, formilitary purposes. So one thing
too, I think that the I pulledfrom the article we talked about
a little bit about thisyesterday, as we kind of had a
(06:13):
had a chat, is kind of the, Iwould say, the offensive
prioritization you've seen inthe past, and really now what
your article focused on is thedefensive needs, which maybe
aren't getting as resourced aswell. Can you talk to that?
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (06:29):
I'll let Molly talk to the specifics on
the resourcing. But in general,I think you've seen this. The
big lesson learned people aretaking from Ukraine is drones
are important. We need to havedrones and thinking about how we
can use them to better go outand attack the enemy, whether
it's making you know your groundbased fires, your artillery
shells, your rockets moreaccurate by just providing up to
(06:53):
date targeting information, orif it's actually directly
attacking them with the one wayattack drones that the first
person view little kamikazes, orthe longer range first attack
drones like the Shah heads thathave seemed to be everywhere
now. And you know, theDepartment of Defense Secretary
(07:14):
HEG says, issued his unleashingdrone dominance, which sounds
very offensive minded, andcertainly is. But then they
recently issued an order toestablish a new task force, a
joint task force for a one thatis going to be focused on drone
defense. And you know, this is avery welcome development, I
(07:36):
think, in our view, but thedevil's always in the details in
terms of what they actually do,because there have been prior
organizations that have beenfocused on countering small
drones and Molly can tell you alittle bit about what we've been
spending our money on and why itis insufficient due to the
(07:59):
growing threat. Yeah.
Molly Campbell (08:01):
So the US investment in countering drones
kind of dates back to the globalwar on terror, unsurprisingly,
in the Operation InherentResolve. So with the liberation
of Mosul, when ISIS first usedsmall I think that believe DJI
commercial drones to drop bombson us advisors and Iraqi forces
(08:21):
in the city and guide one wayexplosive vehicles. And it
really was this kind ofwatershed moment in which the US
could not counter this threat.
And they really came, they had,they came up with, you know,
they mounted a jammer onto aonto a truck and drove it around
the city, and that wasultimately how they figured out
how to counter it. But, youknow, reading firsthand accounts
(08:43):
of that, it was this reallyscary moment that the Iraqi
forces wouldn't go into thecity, and that kind of
galvanized at least in CENTCOM,and the idea like, oh, this
could, like, really suppress ourforces. So Jido, the joint
Improvised Explosive DeviceDefeat Organization, which is
again focused on the IED threat,was kind of given the COAs
(09:04):
mission because, again, it waskind of more seen in that vein
of rogue actors using this kindof improvisational technology.
And they got a joint UrgentOperational need funding. They
used OCO funding to kind ofsurge, more conventional,
conventional air defensesystems, but also some more
(09:25):
innovative solutions. So theland based, land based phalanx
weapon system, which is the seawas mounted onto a truck, you
know, proved really effective atcountering the small drones to
shoot them down. But overall,you know, so there was a huge
spike in spending about in 2018but a lot of that money was
still spent on traditional airdefense for so pack three
(09:47):
interceptors for the Patriotsystem. And not a lot was kind
of forward looking at to how arethese drones going to be used in
future iterations? And. Notnecessarily by a non state
actor. What could this mean,like in a large scale war? And
so there's a major spike afterthat, and then a lull covid, you
(10:07):
know, things were not beingfunded as much. And then the war
in Ukraine, once again, I think,as Stacey alluded to, really
brought this into relief, thatthis is a large scale modern
threat. And part of what didhappen in 2018 was some R and D
investment and some purposebuilt cus technology. So that's
like the coyote missileinterceptor and some of the more
(10:31):
mobile, short range air defensesystems that the Army and the
Marine Corps have. And aroundthe same time that Ukraine is
happening, some of these R and Dinvestments are coming to
fruition and beginning tofruition and beginning to be
procured and fielded. However,it's still an incredibly small
numbers, and it's not sufficientfor the scale of the threat that
we will see in the future. So,and it's also they're based on
(10:54):
antiquity, antiquated systemssuch as like the stinger. A lot
of these systems are based onthe Stinger, which is not very
effective against drones, thoughit's what we have. So there was
a little bit of using existingsystems and kind of creating
these hodgepodge short range airdefenses to apply them against
drones, with some limitedinvestment in purpose built
(11:18):
systems. But again, C, U S isoften kind of grouped in with
the broader air defense mission,and that consumes a lot of the
spending with likereconstituting army, shorad,
major really expensiveinterceptors, in the case of the
Navy, with the SMS,
Jim Cardoso (11:36):
well, you talk about one thing you brought up
there, which actually I'mcurious about, because you
talked about the a lot of, a lotof focus on the ad mission, the
ad forces. And one takeaway, asI read through the article, and
you, you guys, you hit it up aswell in the article, is that
counter drone is not an adproblem. It's an everybody
(11:59):
problem. And you know, you sortof Molly, you sort of
highlighted the fact a lot oftimes the spending goes, okay.
We need to do these things forad forces. But, I mean, you
illustrate throughout thearticle at pepper, you know, it
kind of filters to the wholething that now counter Joan is
something we need to think aboutacross our entire joint force
and even across our our partnernation forces as well. Can you
kind of talk about that a littlebit.
Molly Campbell (12:21):
Yeah, I think the spending that went towards
So, like so like handheld to UASsystems, it really didn't start
until 2022 2023 it's been a veryrecent, very modest investments,
as they kind of dabble indifferent handheld systems,
different like soldierprotection. And I think that is
(12:41):
where the army, for example, ismoving. I think the Marine Corps
is more that's more inherent totheir force structure, to have a
little more defending theindividual unit versus dedicated
air defense,
Jim Cardoso (12:53):
but more mobility too. I mean, you know, they're
gonna they pride themselves onbeing more mobile. You know, as
part of their overall
Molly Campbell (13:00):
army is a bit more siloed, but they're moving
towards that. But I think thatthat's something that's come up
a lot, and, you know, right?
There's individual protection interms of having these handheld
systems that are often onlyreally effective against group
one and two drones, right?
They're like handheld jammers,or maybe it's an enhanced,
(13:21):
enhanced buckshot, for example,to shoot down a drone with a
with your rifle. Um, but that'ssomething we do, you know, kind
of find is we need more of this,like small level, mobile point
defense, to defend, you know,the force,
Jim Cardoso (13:37):
yeah, yeah. No, that, that's, that's good. And
Stacey, I don't have anything toadd to that or,
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (13:42):
I mean, Molly hit on the key points. I
think that you see that the armyrecognized the threat, and the
Joint Force did, but not reallythe scale of it, that everybody,
any adversary, is going to havedrones, then you're going to
have to protect everyone, andthat means that air defense
units, even with the Armyexpanding that that sort of
(14:05):
specialty within the whole forceis going to be inadequate, and
one of the most common sensesolutions, because guns are
ubiquitous. All troops havedifferent types of guns. Most
vehicles do for ground forcesare gun based defenses, and that
the Ukrainians have used them togreat effect to take down the
shaheds. And if you take a gunand create some purpose built
(14:31):
ammunition that has a proximityfuse, so it creates an air burst
and it's more likely to hit avery small drone, perhaps
provide it with a littleguidance, it can be really,
really effective, still verycheap, and you just need to have
either a laser designator orhook it up to a radar. And you
can create your own spag, yourown mobile gun, and having those
(14:53):
that are accompanying groundtroops, and then, you know,
personalized versions of them, Ithink, is going. Be necessary
for all of the services the AirForce is gonna have to worry
about its base defenses. TheNavy already has dealt with a
lot of drones and has realizedthat while the Aegis defenses
(15:14):
that the fleet has arefantastic, they are optimized
for a high end threat, and thatthere is a gap sort of between
the ccwis and their standardmissiles. And that, you know,
improving the and using the fiveinch cannon more means they can
intercept the threats fartheraway. But they need, they need
(15:36):
some more of those purpose builtcounter drone defenses.
Jim Cardoso (15:41):
Yeah, no doubt. You know, on a side note, I, you
know, I see GNSI here. We're ata university, and sometimes I
catch a lot of griefers when Iuse military acronyms. And just
listening to you too, it's like,okay, I understand what you're
saying. But around here, a lotof people wouldn't understand
what you're saying. Good stuff,though. Back to the article. So,
you know your article, it sortof breaks down the counter drone
(16:03):
issue into three main buckets,and investment for the
department to make, for currentdrone threats, investment to
make for future drone threats,and then overall recommendations
and all these. Now you presentall of them in kind of a need to
do now urgency to them, butsince it's right kind of in our
national face, let's discuss,first, what needs to be done
(16:27):
about today's threats that youknow to what? What do we need to
do really right now to counterthings that are that are basing
us on the current battlefield?
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (16:36):
Sure, so we focused on overseas, because
counter homeland defense is adifferent problem set, given the
authorities are different andthe type of weapons you would
want to use. And I think it'shelpful to talk a little bit
about what the Army and the Navyhave been doing from 2023 since
Israel ended up invading Gazaand about mid 2025, this year
(17:01):
for the Navy in terms ofdefeating drones, because the
army was under continuous attackfor about six months, the bases
that they were stationed at inSyria and Iraq, and then the
Navy has been operating in theRed Sea and Houthis, which are
proxy Iranian forces in Yemenhad been attacking commercial
(17:23):
shipping in the Red Sea inresponse to Israel's actions,
and the Navy came in to try todefend these ships and to defend
itself, because they came underattack. And so there's been a
lot of experience recently inshooting down drones, and all
props to the Army, the Navy andthe Air Force who've been
(17:46):
involved in this, becausethey've done a great job. It's
pretty astonishing. The successrate that all of the forces have
had in terms of no drone has hitus. Ships, the army, forces that
were not trained or specializedair defense, or air defenders,
shut down 80% of the more than100 drones fired at them. But
(18:08):
these operations havehighlighted some real problems
and limitations to the currentapproach. Number one is the fact
that the US doesn't have enoughsensors optimized to find
drones. So one of the hardthings about drones is they're
small and they're they fly sortof slow and low, and most of the
equipment the military has isfocused on finding fast flight
(18:31):
or jets or missiles. And so thedrones are hard to see, and you
have to see them before you cando anything about determining
whether it is a threat, and thentrying to stop it, you can
either shoot it down, maybe youjam it, you screw up its control
link or its navigation system,or, you know, otherwise, disrupt
(18:53):
its operations, so they needmore sensors to deal with that.
The other factors that reallyplayed in were inadequate
numbers of interceptors, ofaffordable interceptors the army
was like shuffling around frombase to base, and they were only
able to do this because it was areally otherwise permissive
(19:14):
environment. You know, theyweren't under attack in Iraq and
Syria, other than these one waydrone attacks, which occurred
almost every day, but it wasonly a couple of drones every
day, so it was a pretty modestthreat. And that's true for the
Navy too. The Navy's realproblem is they've got a great
air defense system, but they'refiring off, you know, missiles
(19:34):
that cost five to $30 million toshoot down a drone that costs
$50,000 and that's just notsustainable. It's not cost
effective, and it's wasting theinventory of really valuable
weapons that we should beconserving for greater threats
and more priority threats likeChina or Russia. So using like
(19:56):
the Standard Missile six toshoot down a drone is just.
That's not what you want to bedoing, and going forward, it
it's, I think there's a real is,or maybe there isn't a
realization, but Molly and Irealized that the type of threat
that the US has been facing inthe Middle East was pretty low,
and our forces did really well,and it was still unexpected and
(20:19):
hard and something they hadn'tbeen prepped for before they
were deployed. But you'realready seeing the threat grow
in terms of what the number ofdrones Russia is firing into
Ukraine on any given day or inany given raid or salvo. You
know, it's hundreds, 500 800that would really quickly
exhaust us supplies ofinterceptors and overwhelm air
(20:43):
defenses. So we need to beprepared for the threat to grow
pretty significantly in the nearterm. And that's why you have to
find cost effective solutions.
And they're looking at thisacross the force, in addition to
the guns, you know, improvingthe ammunition for the Navy's
five inch cannon, specificammunition for different ground
(21:04):
vehicles. You also have counterdrone, drones that are out
there, and like the Air Force,started using it a rocket
instead of an air to air missileto intercept the drones, because
a lot of the ones have been shotdown by fighter aircraft, either
Air Force or navy, who have goneout, and the missiles are still
(21:24):
pretty expensive. So, yeah,
Jim Cardoso (21:30):
no, that, I mean, you know, I some some takeaways
from, from that's great answer,you know, sort of the IFF the
Identification Friend or foe.
You kind of talked about howit's sort of a manual process,
and I think we'll get into a bitlater that that's going to have
to that that's gonna have tochange as well, just the cost of
defenses, shooting half amillion dollar missiles at at,
you know, drones that are a100th of that cost. And you
(21:51):
know, you quoted from the battleof the Red Sea. You quoted a
navy leader said, Well, if it'sdefending our people doesn't
matter. The cost doesn't matter.
And, okay, yes, I agree. Untilthe cost is so overwhelming
because they're shootinghundreds of drones at you, then
it does matter at a point. Andthen you have to make risk
(22:13):
assessment decisions as well.
And then, you know, like, like Isaid, Well, Molly and I
realized, and hopefully morepeople realize too, by listening
to this and reading yourarticle, that you know this the
way we've operated, with one totwo drones maybe be shotting at
us, shot us per day or or oneper hour, anything like that.
That's not going to compare tohundreds of drones coming out
(22:35):
our forces in a future fight.
Molly Campbell (22:39):
So go ahead, please add that. I mean, in the
case of the Army, it wasn'twithout injury and loss of life
to US forces right three USforces lost their lives at Tower
22 and there's been, there's aninnumerable amount of like,
traumatic brain injuries fromwhen drones have made impact.
And again, this is just from avery modest threat, like, you
(23:00):
know, a threat you need torespect, but still very modest
compared to what's being seen inUkraine.
Jim Cardoso (23:05):
Yeah, oh yeah, what's in Ukraine, and what we
can kind of prognosticate what'sgoing to be seen in the future
as well. And in fact, you know,turning to that, your article
talks about that. So we've, youknow, talks about the, you know,
how US invests for the currentdrone threat, but then you also
talk about how the US investsfor the future drone threat, and
sometimes the US we like ourexotic solutions to problems,
(23:27):
but some of the technology isimportant to be brought to bear
towards the future drone threat,as you've already alluded to.
Can you kind of talk a littlebit more about that future drone
threat and where we need towhere we need to invest
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (23:39):
sure all of the drones we've been talking
about thus far, and the types ofattacks, even the huge ones,
like Russia's launching prettyfrequently into Ukraine, are
autonomous drones. But they'renot autonomous really swarming
drones in that they'recommunicating independently with
each other and modifying theirbehavior. So to me, a real swarm
(24:02):
involves autonomouscollaboration, where the
collective optimizes itsbehavior to achieve its mission,
and that's going to be even moredifficult to defeat. And we've
seen that China is investing alot in swarming technology. The
Ukrainians and the Russians areas well. The Ukrainians
reportedly have made someadvances in this area, sort of
(24:25):
modest steps, not fullyautonomous swarms recently, and
before we know it, there will betruly autonomous drone swarms
that will be even harder todefeat, in addition to just
massive raids and salvos beingfired, and that's where the US
needs to be thinking about usingtechnology to help to defend
(24:50):
itself, because most of thesolutions that exist today, with
the exception of like jamming,which typically will work
against commercial drones andsome military. Drones. But there
are different ways that you canrespond to that and make your
drone less vulnerable tojamming. Are take out one drone
(25:12):
at a time. So right? You have tofind it. You find it in the sky,
you engage it, you shoot it, andit falls down. And you have to
do all of that in a really,really compressed timeframe, so
30 seconds to a couple minutes,and that's likely going to
shorten even more if you'regoing to have to be re aiming to
engage multiple drones veryquick, in very quick succession.
(25:35):
Due to that fact, the US is,there's it will need layered
defenses so they can sort ofthin out the size of the attack,
but some are probably going toget through and this is where
something like directed energyweapons could be really useful,
especially high poweredmicrowaves that essentially fry
the electronics of everything inits area. They're really short
(25:57):
range, they can potentially frythe electronics of things you
don't want them to damage ordestroy, but they're kind of
like your last layer in yourforce field, and they are the
only sort of defeat mechanismthat can take out an entire
swarm. And they've shown goodpromise in testing. By
(26:19):
comparison, I think the USmilitary Molly's analysis shows
has invested a lot more inlasers, which is another form of
directed energy. Those are stillyou have to aim and then train
the laser shooter, yeah, andkeep it there for a while,
because sometimes it takes alittle bit to burn through it
and actually damage it. Andthose haven't performed nearly
(26:41):
as well when they've beendeployed in the field. They've
had a lot of problems because ofweather, because of just
atmospheric sand, dust disruptsthem.
Jim Cardoso (26:50):
Lasers overall, have not really, in my opinion,
have not really played out theway we sort of envisioned they
would 10 or 20 years ago.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (26:58):
Yeah, I don't, I don't think they have.
And so we we argue that HPMseems like the more promising
tech. And then the other pieceis actually, as we're talking
about the threat becomes fullyat autonomous and collaborating
the US needs to be integratingmore artificial intelligence in
(27:18):
its command and control networkand its battle management to
speed up its process ofidentifying a threat, engaging
it, and using AI algorithms thatcan, you know, verify that this
is a threat and be drone thatand do it really, really quickly
and faster than humans can, sothat they can keep up and
(27:41):
actually knock most of themdown.
Jim Cardoso (27:43):
Yeah, it seems that AI, that one, the military does
seem to understand the theimportance of AI for a variety
of functions and operationalcapabilities. The high power
microwave, that's the one. And Ifound it interesting, and you
said it again, and it reallyleft out a left up the pages as
well, the articles. That'sreally the only one that can
(28:03):
defeat the swarm, that can do,you know, a broad range of
because everything else ispretty much point and shoot, and
you're not going to defeat aswarm that way. And look,
there's some terms. I waswriting these terms down.
There's some terms that probablymake people uncomfortable. You
know, the autonomous, swarming,collaborative, the collective,
people kind of probably freakout a little bit when little bit
when they hear that, but that'swhere this is going, and we need
(28:25):
to understand that and be ableto take some type of activity in
those layered defenses, as yousay, far out, medium, closer in,
so that we can just, you know,sort you know, reduce this,
reduce the swarm As it comes in,so that finally, at the end,
it's, it hopefully is of minimaldamage to our to our forces
(28:46):
fielded Molly, before you looklike you had something you were
looking at.
Molly Campbell (28:50):
I think what's interesting is, on the on the
lasers note, Israel just hadtheir iron beam testing. So
there is some, and they do statethat they're allegedly This is a
it's more hardy againstenvironmental factors. So I just
thought that was interesting,that perhaps there is some more
mature laser technology that theUS has not yet despite the
(29:11):
millions of millions invested.
But the point about swarmingstill exists, and that this is
still like laser still has theissue of dwell time and re
aiming that makes it ineffectiveagainst swarms.
Jim Cardoso (29:25):
Oh yeah, I'm just, like I said, lasers in general.
I I'm a, you know, AF sockSpecial Operations most of my
career. And they always, wealways thought putting a laser
on a c1 30, an AC 130 gunshiplaser, was going to be the way
to go. And they've been workingon and working on and working
on, and they they still haven'tfigured out even the most
(29:45):
current AC 130 the you know, thewhiskey model, or the J model.
I'm sorry, it's still prettymuch all just kind of old
fashioned kinetics, so no de onthere. Yet, they still haven't
quite figured that out.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (29:58):
Jim, if I can jump. In on one point you
made about autonomy and makingpeople uncomfortable. And I
agree, and you know, we haveserious concerns about some
types of autonomy where you havea fully autonomous weapon system
that goes out, figures out whatit wants to strike, determines
that something is a target andengages it without any human
oversight. But there are a lotof more sort of founded forms of
(30:23):
autonomy that already existtoday in many weapons, as I'm
sure you you know, and inparticular in the air defense
systems like the patriot andAegis, they have autonomous
engagement capability becausethey have to, because the speed
of decision making has to be sofast. And the same is true for
(30:43):
counter drone defenses. I thinkon the offensive side, there are
autonomous drones, but they'rereally sort of cruise missiles
that are pre programmed andflying to a certain point we are
going to, I think, see moresophisticated forms of autonomy,
whether we want it or not,because there is an operational
imperative. You see this on thebattlefield in Ukraine with all
(31:05):
the jamming. There are twodifferent solutions. One, really
low tech. You go to a wireguided drone, which the Russians
started doing and have usedquite effectively, but that has
some fairly serious limitationsand drawbacks. And the other
side is at least autonomousautonomous terminal guidance.
And that's not a fullyautonomous drone. It just takes
(31:26):
it sort of the last mile. Andwhen I was in Ukraine, I saw a
number of different companiesthat were developing this last
mile systems, which were sentessentially a module you put
over the camera of the drone,and the operator clicks on a
pixel, so it's essentially apixel lock, and then the drone
is going to continue its flight.
If it's severed and the operatorloses control of it, it goes to
(31:50):
that pixel. It's not at allsophisticated, but the
operational environment is goingto, I think, push towards the
autonomy due to the countersthat people use. It's a cat and
mouse game.
Jim Cardoso (32:05):
Yeah, you have to do it that. I mean, that
capability you just described isnot very different from Lost
link procedures they use on anMQ nine right now. A lot of
similarities there, and that'swhich they have been doing for
1520, years already. So, yeah,things are just moving so fast
here that we need to acceptthese advanced capabilities and
(32:29):
incorporated them, because ouradversaries certainly aren't
wringing their hands wonderingwhether this is a good idea or
bad idea or not. And we need tobe able to defend against that,
and we need to be able tooffensively employ as well. And
then we'll see, you know, we'llsee more about, you know,
collaborative combat aircraft.
Ccaas are becoming a big thingnow. It's another discussion we
may have someday. But today'sabout counter drone. So
continuing discussion aboutcounter drone, um, you hit on
(32:50):
this already, but I want tocircle back to it, because you
devote two you have six chaptersand two chapters, 33% of your
articles about those. There'stwo case studies, you know, the
army, counter drone operation,Middle East, the Navy, the
Navy's and the Air Force ofbattle, of the of the of the of
the Red Sea. We're not going toget into details of that,
(33:12):
because we're trying to keepthis at about 30 minutes, like
we do with all our at theboundaries even our 100th
episode. But people need to diveinto the article and see, see
some of those details of thelessons learned. You've touched
them already, but I want tocircle back just ensure there's
nothing else that kind of comesto mind that you want to talk
about, some key pieces from someteasers, if you will, to those
(33:33):
two lessons learned that readerscan then dive into when they
download your articlethemselves.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (33:41):
Two things, one from each case. So
for the army, the story is afairly human one. It's focusing
on one of the brigades that wasdeployed, the second BCT of the
10th Mountain Division. And Ithink that leadership played a
really important role here. Andsort of there had been a few
drones shot at the prior unitthat had been deployed, and so
(34:05):
they had prepped for it, butnothing on the scale at which
the second brigade faced duringits deployment, and but those
preparations helped, and theyhad to delegate A lot of
authorities down and empowerjunior soldiers, because it was
folks who are at isolatedlocations who had to make these
(34:26):
decisions to shoot down ordrones really quickly. And they
experimented with a lot of tech,and, you know, learned a lot in
the process, but that was reallyimportant there on the Navy
side, you know, the Navy didn'thave any leakers that hit ships
(34:47):
or American naval ships, butwhat you see is that they were
operating pretty continuouslyfor a year and a half or so, and
that really seems to have wornthe fleet down. Was having the
stress and being prepared for aninbound threat with pretty short
notice was something that endedup leading, or at least
(35:10):
contributing to some accidentsthat happened because there were
three fighter aircraft that werelost. One was a friendly fire
incident, so it was shot, Ithink, by a cruiser or
destroyer, I forget which onefell off, the carrier slid off
and one crashed. And so I thinkthere is an element of what we
(35:31):
would call a Fabian strategy ofexhaustion, where the enemy
isn't actually going to be ableto defeat you and even
necessarily harm you, but theyreally can wear you down and
deplete your resources in termsof missiles, air defense,
missiles and interceptors, butwear down your people over time,
because you never know whenyou're going to need to respond.
(35:53):
Molly, do you have anything elseyou wanted to
Jim Cardoso (35:57):
Yeah, that's, you know. It's, it's, you know, it
is interesting. I drew that outtoo, and I really appreciate
that how you talked about a lotof the Human Factors still
matter. I mean, the technologyis important, but the and both
those are and both those casestudies, and you just hit on
those Stacy is the human factorsof how the technology is going
to be employed, and also justgood old fashioned things like,
(36:19):
like leadership and empowermentof subordinates and and fatigue
and stress levels. You know, Ithink that some of the
technology that we employ, youknow, in terms of command and
control, things like that, aregoing to have to mitigate those
human factors that have existedsince the beginning of warfare
and haven't changed any over theover the the Eon, since we
(36:39):
started, since we startedthrowing rocks at each other. So
we're starting to come towardsthe end of the episode. So you
right at the beginning of yourarticle, you have and you talked
about it through the article wasthe overall recommendations to
the department, kind of the youlist the big three. So you know,
as we're starting to wind down,can you describe them for our
listeners again, to give them alittle teaser to dive in and
(37:02):
learn more about them.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (37:03):
Sure, our biggest recommendation is that
US forces need to beoperationally resilient. And
that seems like a sort of arcaneterms, but it means that you can
be under attack and continue toconduct whatever your task is or
your mission is, and resilienceis going to require the type of
active defenses we talked about,where you have guns or missiles
(37:24):
that can shoot down incomingthreats, but it also requires
protective measures. Sosometimes it is simple things
like passive defenses, having ahardened bunker that people can
go hide in, distributing peopleand equipment like aircraft
across the base, don't park themnext to each other, because then
they're more vulnerable, andthat makes the task harder. If,
(37:48):
even if you're facing somethinglike the spider's web attack
that the Ukrainians launched onRussian air bases, if your
aircraft are spread out, it'sharder to hit all of them. So
resilience is really important,and it requires both passive and
active defenses. And those thepassive defenses are really
modest investments, but thedepartment always seems
(38:12):
reluctant to make them, and itwill help oftentimes, against
higher end threats too, like themissile the missile threats that
the US is likely to face in anytheater. We think they need more
low cost interceptors, largestockpiles. So you know what it
really comes down to? We've seenhow bad the department is in
(38:35):
terms of stockpiling largenumbers of its high end
missiles. It needs cheaperthings, and it needs to buy a
lot of them. And hopefully thismight involve Congress
authorizing multi yearprocurement, so you can put a
big order for multiple years,and industry knows and they'll
expand their production capacityand you can buy them. But I
(38:56):
think guns, rockets, sort ofthose low end things are a big
part of it. Some of them mightbe the new tech, like HP, like
high powered microwaves.
Jim Cardoso (39:05):
Well, you talked about training as well. I mean,
just like counter for counterdrone training and kind of
expanding that, again, beyondjust the air defense folks and
also testing. I mean, some ofthe basic stuffs of training and
testing are a big deal that andyou, you know, articulate some,
some examples, especially thetesting side, which is not very
(39:26):
robust, it seems.
Molly Campbell (39:27):
Yeah, I can talk about the testing. So some, when
we talk to some of the secondBCT folks that were out in the
Middle East, they talked about,you know, they were given a few
developmental systems that were,you know, in low rate of
production that had not beenreally thoroughly tested in the
homeland, because there's thismattering of restrictions,
(39:50):
particularly on directed energy,on EW and even just on kinetic
testing at ranges around theUnited States. So they just
weren't really. Thoroughlytested. They were used against
assembly drones that weren'thardened. So they really, there
was kind of a false confidencein the developers and in even
the force giving them thesecapabilities that when they put
them against, you know, Orionmade drones, yes, they are
(40:14):
cheap, but they are still fairlyeffective, and they are military
grade weapons that they justdidn't, they weren't up to
snuff. And that that, you know,is a risk if we're, you know,
spending a lot of money todevelop and test products that
then when we put out and givethem to the warfighter, aren't
effective. So that was kind of abig recommendation that we had,
(40:35):
of like, we need to think abouthow we intensify testing
conditions? And I mean, I thinkwe're also like modifying that
recommendation to give tocongressional leaders so, you
know, see how different domesticregulations can be shifted, how
they can work with the new taskforce, to kind of maybe have a
(40:58):
purpose UAS testing facility,and that was in head success
memo, I believe, to find a, youknow, or identify a purpose cuas
testing range. So there aresteps towards this. And even
folks from industry say, like,yeah, we want to test these more
rigorously, so that, you know,our soldiers aren't out there up
(41:20):
a creek without a paddle. But sothey're like, oh, this should be
great. And then it's, you know,ineffective, and then
Jim Cardoso (41:25):
it's not great, yeah? I mean, you need to test
time. It's, it can be achallenge, though, sometimes
there's limited range, time,limited capability, yeah, but
it's, it's necessary. I mean,you make that very clear in the
article. So as we sort of thethe quarter in our jukebox, to
use another antiquated phrase,starts to run out, uh, besides
another PSA, to read the fullarticle, which I've made and
I'll make again. Any finalthoughts from both you before we
(41:46):
click off, Molly, I'll startwith you. Any final thoughts?
Molly Campbell (41:50):
Yeah, I think just that, you know, in many
ways, cuas isn't unique in termsof, when you think of it from
like the budget and bureaucraticside, like a lot of different
missions are impacted by lack ofproduction, you know, not being
scaled at the rate necessary,and that the forces are just
generally ill equipped, youknow, so that this is still kind
(42:12):
of victim to the bureaucracy ofthe Department of Defense, but
that this threat is, I isperhaps less considered as much,
I think, just in the from thedefensive capacity, and that
there are these less glamoroussolutions, such as passive
defenses, like nets, camo,decoys, things that you know
(42:34):
aren't, again, a very exquisite,um, high end solution, but that
can be really effective atsaving American lives that, you
know, maybe we need to look backat some what, what do we have,
and how can we build on what wehave to be effective in the
short term, and, you know, evenin the long term, I think that's
my, my main That's
Jim Cardoso (42:55):
a great thought.
Whatever works, right, we needto employ that. Some of it's
going to be exotic systems. Someit's going to be very simple,
but we need to look at and findthe thing that does work, and
just consider that. Stacey, anyfinal thoughts from you before
we end the podcast?
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (43:08):
Just to expand on some of the points
Molly made, a little bit, Iagree completely we need this
high, low mix. I think that, andI firmly believe drones are
going to be this threat, andthey are a growing threat, but
it's and it's going to mean thatUS forces are going to face more
risk. It's because suddenlyadversaries have an ability to
(43:30):
fairly accurately strike the USfrom long distances, and they
didn't used to have that. Sothat's just a fact of life now,
and not something we canreverse, but the counter drone
threat right now, it's notimpossible. The US has done
really well in situations whereit didn't have the right
weapons, the right sensors, orwell trained forces yet in place
(43:53):
and capitalizing on ouradvantage in personnel and then
equipping them and preparingthem for this. You know, it's
not going to be dire if we takethe steps that we really need to
and can, because so many of thesolutions are readily available
right now and are not, you know,cost prohibitive. The US just
(44:18):
needs to actually do it and takeit seriously.
Jim Cardoso (44:22):
That about wraps it up. Stacy Molly, thank you so
much for your time today. Ireally enjoyed our conversation.
Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn (44:28):
Thanks for having us. Thank you for having
us. Special.
Jim Cardoso (44:31):
Thanks to our guests today, Dr Stacy pettje on
and Molly Campbell from theCenter for New American
Security. Stacey is the directorof cnsi defense program, and
Molly is a research assistant inthat program. We really enjoyed
talking to them today abouttheir new article, countering
the swarm, protecting the jointforce in the drone age, which is
freely available on the CNSsite. Next week, on the podcast,
(44:55):
our guests will be GNSI ResearchFellow, Dr Guido Rossi, and Dr
Matthew Ford. From the SwedishDefense University in Stockholm,
they'll have an in depthdiscussion about something
that'll seem as far away fromhigh tech autonomous weapon
systems as you can get the USArmy's standard issue rifle. The
army is on the verge of changingit, and you may be surprised to
(45:17):
discover that the effects ofthat change are far reaching and
a little controversial Tune innext week to discover why.
Thanks for listening today.
We're glad you could share sometime with us on this milestone,
100th episode of at theboundary. We hope you stick
around for the next 100 as wellas we progress down that path,
you can follow along with GNSIand our LinkedIn next accounts
(45:37):
at USF underscore GNSI And checkout our website as well at
usf.edu/gnsi, while you'rethere, subscribe to our monthly
newsletter to keep up witheverything we're doing at GNSI.
That'sgoing to wrap up this episode of
(45:58):
at the boundary. Each newepisode will feature global and
national security issues wefound to be insightful,
intriguing, maybe controversial,but overall, just worth talking
about. I'm Jim Cardoso, andwe'll see you at the boundary.
You.
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