The Pentagon has been working on defense against drone strikes after three U.S. reserve servicemen were killed in Jordan in an attack by a pro-Iran militia on their outpost last year, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
According to the report, the threat from swarms of drones hitting American forces overseas, but also in the homeland, was considered significant after both Israel and Ukraine used strikes by UAVs smuggled into enemy territory.
IDF drone strikes an apartment in Tehran
Israel's strikes on targets in Iran and Ukraine's "Spider Web operation, destroying Russian bombers, exhibited the need for new technologies to intercept drones more effectively.
“Cheaper, one-way commercially available drones with small explosives represent a new threat,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a hearing on Capitol Hill last month.
The Times defense industry officials who said the Pentagon must change existing perceptions and adopt new strategies to respond to the threat. Companies have been developing new technologies that they hope would be included in the Pentagon's investments of billions of dollars in missile defense as part of the Golden Dome project announced by U.S. President Donald Trump lst May.
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Some of the new technologies are designed to shoot down swarms of drones at the same time using what is known as directed energy, including high-powered microwaves. At least two tests of the new microwave system were conducted including one in the Middle East and one in the Pacific, according to the report.
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U.S. President Trump announces the Golden Dome defense project
(Photo: Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)
Epirus, the company that developed the microwave defense, warned that the U.S. could face a threat of a "guerilla war" by machines. "“What we saw in Russia will play out here,” said Epirus CEO Andy Lowery. “Operation Spider’s Web should be a real wake-up call to us, to the whole world, that this is very, very serious.”