Twenty-Five Years After 9/11, the United States Is Unprepared for Terrorism’s Next Wave

Council on Foreign Relations | Bruce Hoffman

The United States homeland faces a critical vulnerability to emerging terrorist threats twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks due to rapid technological advancements and a severe domestic preparedness gap. Unmanned aerial systems now routinely breach American airspace, with the Federal Aviation Administration documenting over four hundred illegal drone flights over domestic airports in the first quarter of 2025 alone.

This operational exposure is compounded by the geopolitical fallout of the 2026 U.S.-led war against Iran, which fuels extremist recruitment and narrative campaigns globally. The threat landscape has expanded dramatically. While adversaries leverage artificial intelligence to generate sophisticated propaganda, Washington's strategic focus has shifted away from counterterrorism. Consequently, the recent U.S. National Counterterrorism Strategy fails to prioritize state-sponsored threats, leaving critical infrastructure unprotected as funding for vital online and offline resilience programs dries up, leaving the nation highly exposed to the next wave of coordinated attacks.

Comment

The proliferation of commercial unmanned aerial systems has outpaced the defensive capabilities of the Federal Aviation Administration and domestic security agencies. Cheap, off-the-shelf drone technology bypasses traditional North American Aerospace Defense Command early-warning systems designed for high-altitude ballistic threats. This technological asymmetry is visible in the recorded incursions at Barksdale Air Force Base, where low-signature platforms exploit gaps in localised radar coverage. The integration of artificial intelligence into these consumer-grade platforms, as demonstrated by Islamic State media units using automated translation tools, further accelerates the automation of target selection.

This domestic vulnerability forces a reallocation of Department of Defense assets from overseas theatres to homeland defence missions. This shift directly degrades the capability of the United States Central Command to monitor hostile networks in the Middle East. The diversion of specialised electronic warfare assets to secure domestic installations like Barksdale Air Force Base weakens forward-deployed deterrence postures against Quds Force proxies.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If incursions at Barksdale Air Force Base continue to expose gaps in domestic radar coverage, how will the resulting requirement for localised electronic warfare assets affect the forward-deployed posture of United States Central Command against Quds Force proxies?

The persistent detection of unmanned systems over sensitive installations suggests that domestic air defence will increasingly compete with expeditionary requirements for scarce electronic warfare capabilities. My assessment is that this competition will compel United States Central Command to accept higher operational risks in the Middle East or rely more heavily on allied counter-UAS systems. Ultimately, the trajectory indicates that homeland defence can no longer be treated as a sanctuary, forcing a structural rebalancing of tactical signal-jamming assets.

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