Michael Marrow
DESTIN, Florida — Flying hundreds of feet in the air against a clear blue sky, the small drone barreled toward a defended position, its profile similar to other unmanned systems that have evaded authorities on US installations. But this drone wouldn’t return to its sender: soon after its detection, defending personnel dispatched their own drone that smashed into the encroacher, sending both plummeting back to earth.
That’s life for a drone during Falcon Peak, a second-year exercise hosted by US Northern Command in late September to hone counter-drone prowess at domestic military facilities. Despite concerted efforts by the US government to defeat unmanned threats, their incursions into US military installations are increasing, according to NORTHCOM head Gen. Gregory Guillot.
“We’re between [about] one and two incursions per day” at DoD installations, Guillot told reporters during a roundtable here. A NORTHCOM spokesperson later told Breaking Defense there were 230 drone incursions reported over military installations between September 2023 and September 2024, which jumped by 82 percent to approximately 420 sightings reported over roughly the same period the following year.
Whatever the cause of the increase — and Guillot noted, “I don’t know if the problem’s worse, or we have more systems out there that can detect them” — that kind of major jump is bound to get a response from the Pentagon.
Drone incursions over domestic bases have been a top problem for officials following mysterious unmanned flights over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in late 2023 and other high-profile sightings, prompting widespread scrutiny over why many installations seem powerless to stop them. The issue, officials have said, is that typical counter-drone technologies are not safe to use in civilian airspace, a problem compounded by a byzantine set of rules for installation self-protection.
Hence the Falcon Peak effort, where the government has called up industry to offer its very best solutions that can detect, track and defeat small drones in ways that maintain the integrity of civilian airspace. Similar to the first Falcon Peak, held last year at the foothills of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, this year’s event used testing ranges belonging to Eglin Air Force Base on the beaches of Santa Rosa Island in Florida.
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