A busy commercial airport cancels all flights twice in quick succession. The trigger? Small, remote-controlled, low-flying objects. Safety concerns over drone activity and the defensive measures in place to deal with drones caused chaos this year at El Paso’s international airport.
Cheap, expendable drones also dominate modern battlefields. They have allowed Ukraine to battle much-larger Russia into a stalemate. Iran has used them to bloody the US and close the critical Straits of Hormuz.
How to benefit from and cope with the drone revolution represents a major security opportunity — and challenge. Existing measures are insufficient. Chinese components flood Western markets and scoop up data. Regulatory approaches to date have focused on imposing bans against Chinese products. They fail to deal with the existing drone fleet or to construct viable alternatives.
This must change. In a series of articles leading up to the NATO Summit in July, the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) will explore the broad implications of the drone revolution. CEPA will describe the challenge and offer recommendations for practical solutions, drawing on expertise from the technology and defense communities.
CEPA is well positioned to lead drone research. Its offices in both Washington and Brussels prioritize transatlantic defense and security. Series contributors will be drawn from CEPA’s Tech Policy and Transatlantic Defense and Security programs, to include military strategists and technology policy thought leaders with decades of US, European, and NATO experience.
Defense against drones is complicated. Anti-drone measures, such as signal jamming, tend to be all or nothing, impacting all devices in range — dangerous and innocent. Other defense tactics, such as shooting laser beams, are still being perfected, and conventional missile air defense measures are expensive. Deployment of these defenses can do more damage than any drone disruption. Solutions must balance the security concerns with the widespread, safe deployment of drones to boost a wide variety of fields, from agriculture to law enforcement.
The El Paso closures illustrated many of the challenges in combatting the drone security problem. Drones hovered near the US Air Force base, potentially recording and transmitting images to China or elsewhere, raising national security questions. But the US Customs and Border Protection operated the drone in the first place. Almost anyone can buy a drone and put it to use with little or no traceability. Drones fly over borders. Meeting the drone challenge represents an international problem that will require an international solution.
Start with identification. No comprehensive database of drone operators exists. Mexican cartels deploy drones for drug trafficking, crisscrossing the border near El Paso. US customs authorities respond by deploying their own drones. The devices came too close to the US Air Force base for comfort, and the presence of the drones triggered indiscriminate anti-drone measures at the nearby airport.
Drones can pose dramatic dangers. The Kremlin used a wide array of them to shut down airports across Europe in its shadow war against NATO allies. No universal, reliable means exist to identify and track drones in the US or anywhere else. There is no Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) or International Civil Aviation Organization equivalent for small devices. Users are not required to have a license, so there is no means to identify drone operators.
Device security is next. Drones do not need to be operated by criminals to be a threat. The details of the devices seen in El Paso have not been shared, but over 85% of all drones in use in the US were made in China and it is certain that some of the component parts and the software running on the El Paso devices were of Chinese origin. This matters, as the data gathered and obtained by any devices — like say, video footage of a US Air Force base — could conceivably be sent directly to China by default, without the knowledge or consent of the user. Or more worryingly, devices could be commandeered and weaponized from afar.
The Federal Communications Commission has banned all foreign-made drones and drone components, with a few temporary exceptions. But the ban does not address the hundreds of thousands of Chinese drones in active use throughout the US today — or western dependence on Chinese components for drone production. The “rip and replace” approach used to remove Chinese equipment from telecoms networks is not a practical option, so what is the rearguard action to secure the existing drone fleet?
Along with the US, both the EU and NATO are attempting to create and enforce standards on drone procurement, use, parts, and sourcing. It’s a perilous task. China dominates supply to such an extent that it will be difficult to change without provoking Chinese retaliation. The EU’s Action Plan on Drone and Counter Drone Security includes ambitious goals to develop Europe’s capacity to build drones alongside security objectives, such as requirements for operator identification and a “traffic management system” for drones to facilitate safe usage. NATO’s plans focus more on procurement and innovation, and some NATO members have already banded together to boost manufacturing efforts.
Although bans might help, they are no silver bullet. During the 1940s, the US and its allies led the way with the Chicago Convention, allowing commercial aviation to grow and flourish to this day. Such leadership is required again to put rules around drones that allow them to benefit both civilians and defense industries — while mitigating their dangers.
Ronan Murphy is Director of the Tech Policy Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Catherine Sendak is the Director of the Transatlantic Defense and Security program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). From 2018 to 2021, she was the Principal Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Sendak also spent over a dozen years on Capitol Hill on both the House and Senate Committees on Armed Services.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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