The Australian Army must ensure all its soldiers understand the danger posed by small, cheap drones and train them to counter that threat. To best support our forces, a centre of excellence that gathers existing knowledge and provides timely intelligence to Defence is needed.

Such drones, typically based on consumer products or their parts, are called small uncrewed aerial systems (sUASs). They’re widely available, easily operated and well suited to performing surveillance and kinetic attacks on modern battlefields. So they are difficult to sense and defeat, and military forces unprepared for adversarial uses of then have suffered devastating effects in combat.

In October 2023, operators in Ukraine’s Army of Drones project damaged 220 Russian military vehicles and depots in a single week. Referring to the battle for Mosul in 2016, the commander of US Special Operations Command, General Raymond Thomas called small drones operated by Islamic State the ‘most daunting problem’ his forces faced. By the spring of 2017, the Islamic State was conducting 60 to 100 drone strikes a month in Syria and Iraq against US and allied forces.

Traditional air defence capabilities designed to target helicopters and fighter aircraft cannot effectively detect and engage many small drones, and shooting one down costs far more than the drone itself.

At a 2017 military symposium, US General David Perkins relayed the story of an unnamed ally’s use of a US$3 million air defence missile. ‘That quadcopter that cost 200 bucks from Amazon.com did not stand a chance against a Patriot,’ he said.

It was clear then that much cheaper methods were needed, and it’s even clearer after two-and-a-half years of fighting in Ukraine.

The centre of excellence that Australia needs would prepare the Australian Defence Force and other national security agencies for the threat of small drones on home soil and during overseas operations. It should either be part of the defence establishment or be an interdepartmental agency with representatives from CASA, intelligence organisations, the Department of Home Affairs and the Australian Federal Police. And it should focus on four specific areas to improve Australia’s capability to counter sUASs:

—Forecasting developments in technology of sUASs and ways to counter them;

—Gathering global lessons learned from nefarious employment of them;

—Maintaining databases of known sUAS capabilities and vulnerabilities; and

—Assessing suspicious or captured sUASs and exploiting their weaknesses.

The centre would be attuned to the quickly evolving threat of such drones, providing Defence and other government agencies with timely intelligence on the latest sUAS capabilities, tactics and vulnerabilities.

In developing methods to counter small drones, Australia should build on existing technology and knowledge. While a variety of counter-sUAS technologies and commercial systems have emerged, each with its own strengths and limitations, none is ideal in all environments against all threats.

For detecting and tracking small drones, a combination of imaging, radar and passive radiofrequency systems is preferable as it can use the strengths of each technology to detect and identify drones. For the engagement of sUASs, the preferred technology depends on the environment, expected target and likely collateral effects. For example, high-powered microwave weapons might be suitable for defending ground forces in a remote environment against sUAS swarms, but a deployment to a civilian airfield might risk collateral damage to aircraft or air traffic control systems.

Building countermeasures against small drones is challenging, because their technology and the ways of using them are evolving rapidly due to their low cost and ease of development. Operating countries or organisations can easily modify their drones to improve survivability and mission success.

So Australia must develop a layered defence system, combined with continuous research and development on emerging sUAS and counter-sUAS technologies. Passive defences must also be used, including concealment, deception, hardening and dispersion. Passive measures are particularly important in the near term while the Department of Defence works to deliver active means.

The challenge of countering the small-drone threat on Australian territory is even more complex than doing so in overseas deployments, due to Australian regulatory obstacles. Australia was once a global pioneer in establishing rules that govern flights of uncrewed aircraft, but now it must review them in light of the wide proliferation of small drones, rapid advances in their technology and the evolving threats they pose.

Globally, small drones continue to cause significant national security concerns. Some were recently detected flying over a US Air Force plant that makes B-21 bombers, and the gunman who tried to kill Donald Trump used one in advance to study the scene.

By establishing a counter-sUAS centre of excellence and providing training to ADF members, Defence can improve its capabilities based on the latest knowledge and technology and prepare the ADF to counter sUAS threats at home and abroad.

There’s a growing trend for naval forces to acquire uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) because of the potential advantages they offer, such as reduced risk and the ability to provide a persistent presence. In a medium-sized navy facing significant strategic challenges such as the Royal Australian Navy, it will be tempting for the upcoming surface combatant fleet review to promote the rapid acquisition of USVs to achieve the required national security effects at a lower cost per unit than their crewed counterparts and with shorter delivery times.

This direction is being pursued by navies globally and represents, to some degree, an important trend in planning for future maritime operations. However, before large-scale acquisition, naval forces must consider the unique operational challenges associated with USVs, such as their legal status, speed, vulnerability to interference by potential adversaries, sustainment and maintenance.

A comprehensive understanding of their intended concept of operations (CONOPS) that accounts for protection, maintenance, sustainment and ideal design criteria is necessary to exploit the benefits of USVs and avoid costly acquisition decisions based on a lack of understanding of how they can be employed effectively. The CONOPS would also allow for a detailed understanding of what the different classes of USVs offer and how they should be employed.

History has shown that being at the forefront of integrating new capabilities can provide a key military edge. In the past 18 months there have been significant developments in this area, such as the US Navy’s establishment of Task Force 59, which is focused on the delivery of an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capability, and its recent attainment of full operational capability. The US Navy’s Ghost Fleet Overlord program also deployed a fleet of USVs from San Diego to Hawaii to participate in RIMPAC 2022.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy demonstrated a missile firing during NATO wargames in mid-2021 using its MADFOX (Maritime Demonstrator for Operational eXperimentation) vessel. In 2022, it acquired and began testing an mine countermeasures USV. Closer to home, the RAN will acquire five Bluebottle USVs and is working with Austal on the patrol boat autonomy trial. The former HMAS Maitland will be renamed Sentinel and refurbished to allow for autonomous and remote operations. The RAN has also acquired and tested a maritime tactical systems catamaran, demonstrating a clear desire to expand its USV capabilities.

The successful integration of uncrewed aerial vehicles into almost all modern militaries indicates the potential benefits of fully integrating USVs. However, unique factors associated with surface capabilities present operational challenges that need to be fully considered through the development CONOPS before any large-scale acquisition.

USV capabilities span a vast array of sizes and functions, ranging from small ISR or oceanographic capabilities to large corvette-sized vessels for defensive and offensive operations. The reduction or elimination of crewing, the likely cost savings, and the ability to transit vast distances and provide a persistent presence while reducing the need to expose crewed capabilities to major threats are important benefits. However, the development of an effective CONOPS before any large-scale acquisition will highlight the challenges that must be worked through to provide an asymmetric advantage.

The legal status of USVs is a grey area and is subject to debate, and so that must be a consideration in developing a CONOPS that covers where USVs will be deployed, how potential adversaries may react to their deployment, and the spectrum of options open to the operational commander once an adversary does react. Clarity in the international standing of USV capabilities would provide commanders with an indication of how adversarial actors might interact with those capabilities. In contrast, uncertainty or a lack of clarity creates potential flashpoints for escalation. In introducing any new capability, an operational commander must consider whether its introduction would fundamentally change the calculus for escalation.

This raises the question of a threshold test when introducing emerging disruptive technologies into a theatre of operations. What is the threshold for interference with the vehicle by adversary forces that would generate a reaction? What reaction would it generate? In the 2022 example of Iranian interference with US sail drones, the interference didn’t appear to provoke a kinetic reaction, nor did the 2016 Chinese interference with a US wave glider; however, they could arguably be viewed as propaganda victories for both countries. Does this mean that militaries are unlikely to seek kinetic resolution with respect to interference with USV capabilities? If so, does this encourage adversaries to interfere knowing that it’s likely to be below the threshold at which a costly response is initiated? This may in turn make USVs more likely to be targeted than crewed capabilities, which may become costly and may well shape how they are operationally employed.

In developing a CONOPS for USVs, it’s challenging to group them, given the vast array of military capabilities available. However, when compared to the operation of uncrewed aerial vehicles, speed is a key factor. Most USVs operate at a speed that makes them an easy target for interference by adversarial actors, unless they are afforded protection. This vulnerability has been evident in several cases, including the attempted Iranian seizure of the US sail drones and the 2016 Chinese seizure of a US oceanographic wave glider in the South China Sea. An effective CONOPS would account for this vulnerability and provide protection through their intended employment or help articulate a key design specification of a required minimum speed or, if they’re considered attritable, a specification for acquisition at a necessary scale.

In the current era of competition, USV capabilities will remain an attractive target for physical or kinetic interference as their use proliferates. When developing a CONOPS, two key factors must be considered. If the capabilities are attritable, they need to be acquired and employed at low cost and at scale to avoid tying up additional assets to protect them. Employing crewed capabilities to provide protection or overwatch nullifies any benefits of the reduction in crew and cost.

And if the USVs are not considered attritable, and if it isn’t prudent to provide a crewed capability to protect them, they must either have the ability to protect themselves (which, at present, is a legal and technological quagmire) or be employed in areas where friendly forces have air and sea control. That would likely make them more effective for fleet logistics and sustainment roles rather than ISR and offensive operations during conflict. Such issues clearly need to be considered through the development of an effective CONOPS prior to acquisition.

Although one of the great advantages of USVs is their ability to loiter, this poses a question of how to sustain them in position, and whether they need to be maintained in position or brought home. If maintenance is done in position, how do you sustain and protect the maintainers? Do they stay on the vessels, or does this change the design? Is a ‘mothership’ capability needed, and how do you protect that vessel? How do you refuel USVs and how many do you need to employ them effectively?

The development of a comprehensive and effective CONOPS for USVs must take into account these and other factors unique to surface capabilities. By addressing these challenges up front, military leaders can ensure the successful integration of USVs into their operations, providing a valuable asset in modern naval warfare.

In early March, President Donald Trump caused a furore when he revoked a requirement for the US intelligence community to report on civilian casualties in airstrikes outside war zones. The decision is the latest in a larger trend of the Trump administration’s undermining the mechanisms of oversight for the use of force abroad. While these developments have received much attention for depriving defence reporters of access to their usual Pentagon contacts, they also limit the public’s and the legislative branch’s access to information, which could have negative effects on US military operations more broadly.

When you examine the drivers of the current military engagements of the US and its allies, the lack of transparency may seem like a natural development. In the aftermath of the large-scale interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which attempts at nation-building were largely judged to have failed, Western governments have struggled to find new ways to deal with threats abroad without risking public and legislative outrage.

What has emerged is an approach that the Oxford Research Group refers to as ‘remote warfare’, in which local forces do the bulk of the frontline fighting, backed by special forces operations and by air support, training and equipment from Western militaries. It’s perhaps a predictable consequence of 21st century operations that transparency would suffer. And it has. But for no good reason.

The probable fallouts of Trump’s new policies could severely impair the US’s ability to achieve its national objectives abroad.

Deniability and diminished transparency may be perceived to bring flexibility and allow the government to avoid public scrutiny. But our research suggests that it’s not a simple relationship. More secrecy does not automatically translate into greater strategic advantages. In fact, in an age in which both enemy forces and civilian witnesses have cameras and Wi-Fi, building policies on the assumption of complete secrecy is increasingly untenable—and government control of the narrative will be the first to suffer.

While control of information and disinformation has always played a role in warfare, in modern operations there’s a widespread notion that the battles over control of the narrative are as important as those on the battlefield. This sentiment is perhaps best captured in the arguments of US Army General David Petraeus and others about winning ‘hearts and minds’; for example, Petraeus once said that the US must ‘[r]ealize that we are in a struggle for legitimacy that will be won or lost in the perception of the Iraqi people’.

In repealing the requirement to report on casualties—civilian, but also militants—of the intelligence agencies’ drone strikes in non-combat zones, Trump has willingly allowed others to take over the narrative. Which of course they will, as they have so many times before. Ned Price, a CIA National Security Council spokesman under Barack Obama, made the same point recently: ‘This requirement was about more than transparency. It allowed, for the first time, the US to counter disinformation from terrorist groups with facts about the effectiveness and precision of our operations. It was an important tool that we’re again without.’

Decreasing transparency over the use of remote warfare also has the detrimental effect of preventing the legislative branch of government from playing the important role of ensuring that methods of engagement—be they drones or special operations forces—are chosen on the basis of their strategic advantage rather than the immediate short-term results. This is particularly significant in remote warfare, where the ability to deploy drones, which are often seen as ‘clean’ and ‘cheap’ tools, without significant oversight creates a risk that they’ll be used because they’re the most politically expedient option, rather than because they’re the best possible response to insecurity. Oversight mechanisms help to ensure that the right questions are asked about strategy and the objectives of such deployments before the damage gets done.

Such mechanisms could potentially help prevent the kind of neck-breaking strategic changes that we saw on the African continent following the deaths of four US Special Operations soldiers in Niger in late 2017. Arguably, it was the shock expressed by the American people (and government) at the US presence in this relatively unknown battle in the wider war on terror that caused the US to suddenly abandon its strategy of deploying troops and focus instead on operating an increasing number of drones in the area—a choice that is likely to create more discontent and to be used as recruitment material for the Islamists that the US is there to fight.

This is not to say that there should be full transparency over American engagement in current wars. It’s simply that many of the transparency and oversight mechanisms that Trump is undermining or even abolishing have been in place for years—in some cases decades—and have never been directly linked with national security crises. Removing them seems counterproductive. Not only does it undermine democratic institutions, it also risks undermining US foreign policy more broadly, by handing the reins of the narrative over to the adversary and bypassing the mechanisms that could stop short-term decisions from trumping strategic considerations.