Countermeasures Briefing: 07/15/22

Highlights This Week:

• DHS, DOJ, and FAA Testimony Reveals Major Increase in UAS Threats

• C-UAS Testbed Opens in Richmond to Evaluate Solutions in Dense Urban Environment

• New C-UAS Investment, Sales Deals Announced

A Swarm of UAS (Testimony) On the Hill

The Senate held a hearing Thursday, entitled ‘Protecting the Homeland from Unmanned Aircraft Systems.” Not able to attend? Here’s what you missed:

• Threat to domestic airports increasing: Since 2021, the TSA reported nearly 2,000 drone sightings near U.S. airports, including incursions at major airports nearly every day.

  • Incursions led to 64 evasive actions by commercial aircraft, including 4 incidents deemed “critical.” (DHS)

• Limited C-UAS Ability: The FBI had the capacity to answer only 70 of the over 121,000 requests for C-UAS protection operations. For those tracking at home, that’s a 0.05% success rate. (DOJ)

  • During those 70 operations, FBI’s C-UAS teams detected 974 unauthorized drones, located the operator of 279 systems, and attempted mitigation against 50 drones.

• Critical infrastructure remains a major vulnerability: The FBI identified 235 reports of suspicious drone flights at or near chemical plants in Louisiana. Similar incidents occurred at oil storage facilities in Oklahoma and at natural gas facilities in Texas. (DOJ)

• Border insecurity: CBP has detected more than 8,000 illegal cross-border flights at the southern border, an average of nearly 900 per month. DOJ also noted increasing concern in the use of UAS by Mexican cartels to assassinate rivals south of the border. (DHS, DOJ)

• NFL in Need of a New Defense: Unlawful drones disrupted two NFL games in 2021, dropping flyers over spectators at two separate games in California, though the DOJ recognized that a more nefarious actor could have used the drone to drop explosives or spray deadly chemical agents on the crowd. (DOJ)

Analysis: Thursday's testimony highlighted a shared sense of desperation among the key agencies tasked with ensuring domestic UAS defense. Expect lawmakers to support plans proposed by DHS, DOJ, and FAA to standardize C-UAS equipment lists, training, certification, risk-based assessments, and coordination. Doing so would build upon the 'approved vendor list' already under development at DHS and would help mitigate impacts to commercial aviation by C-UAS activities. In addition, an accepted and standardized C-UAS approach would allow for the extension of C-UAS authorities to the TSA, and extension of C-UAS detection authorities to state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) law enforcement organizations, and critical infrastructure owners and operators, decreasing the demand on federal agencies while simultaneously increasing the available market for C-UAS monitoring services.

Timeline: Expect immediate legislative action. DHS and DOJ authorization to conduct C-UAS expires on October 5, 2022.

The Buzz around Town

• DHS opens Counter-Drone Testbed in Richmond, Virginia, to test C-UAS solutions in a dense urban setting. (Defense Daily)

• Marines announce Installation-Counter small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICsUAS) program to protect USMC installations from threat of Group 1 and Group 2 UAS. (Link)

• Israeli MC-HORIZON system successfully intercepted 24 drones during live concerts in Italy (Israel Defense)

• President Biden nominated the CEO of Denver International Airport, Phil Washington, to serve as the next FAA head. In his new role, Washington will oversee long-delayed decisions on rulemaking for flight beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations in the US. His nomination has the support of a major industry advocacy group, the Association for Uncrewed Vehicles and Systems International (AUVSI). (WSJ)

• Texas man indicted after using drone to smuggle wire cutters, cell phones, into prison (Story)

• The Institute for Defense and Government Advancement released its Counter UAS System Report 2022. While light on new insights, it provides a basic overview of efforts by Israel, Italy, Morocco, NATO, Spain, the UK, and US to address and procure UAS detect and defeat solutions. (Full Document)

Market News

• Dedrone closes $30M Series C-1 round to fuel U.S. and international expansion efforts (DroneDJ.com)

• Zen Technologies to deliver 25 static C-UAS systems to the Indian Air Force in $19.5M deal (Jane’s)

• Rhode & Schwarz announce the launch of the Ardonis counter drone system to detect commercial UAS across the 20MHz to 6 GHz range. (MilitaryAerospace.com)

• Israel to sell drone, counter drone systems to Bahrain. (WSJ)