William Mayne
Of all of the modern war lessons that have emerged from more than four years of war in Ukraine, the rapid rise of weaponized drone technology and the necessary race to develop systems to counter them has arguably received the most attention—and the most resourcing by militaries around the world seeking to address it. Notable examples like fiber-optic drones, which are impervious to electronic warfare countermeasures, and Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, which used hidden drones to attack Russian strategic airfields, have exposed vulnerabilities to military forces operating from static, easy to identify locations.
For US forces, the lessons learned vicariously through the war in Ukraine are being reinforced by the combat operations in the Middle East they are now engaged in. The threat of weaponized drones is quickly shifting from academic to existential for units deployed within range of Iranian and Iranian-aligned militia groups’ one-way attack and first-person-view drones in the Middle East. Despite a major push by the US armed services into counterdrone improvement, a simple, low-tech solution is being overlooked: the antidrone net.
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