WASHINGTON — The draft defense authorization bill that the House Armed Services Committee plans to mark up in the coming days would require the Pentagon to set up counter-drone defenses at a handful of military-related facilities inside the United States.
The mandate is one of several ways the measure manifests deep congressional concerns about whether the U.S. military and American society more broadly is responding quickly and properly to advances in warfare in ongoing wars.
One key question concerns how American forces — both overseas and in stateside bases — might defend against lethal drones. Such weapons are on display in great numbers in conflicts from Ukraine to the Red Sea, and China is producing them en masse and less expensively than America is.
Ukraine opened eyes around the world to the changing face of warfare in “Operation Spider Web.” In that campaign, Ukraine clandestinely inserted drones into Russia hidden inside trucks and then, on June 1, remotely launched dozens of the weapons against Russian military airfields.
The other critical matter on congressional minds is how America’s drones and guided weapons can be effective in the face of adversaries’ increasing ability to jam the radio frequencies and Global Positioning System signals that U.S. forces and their weaponry need to find their way in combat.
“Uncrewed systems pose both an urgent and enduring threat to United States personnel, facilities, and assets, to include those located inside the United States homeland,” said the draft report accompanying the fiscal 2026 NDAA. “These threats are rapidly changing how wars are fought in real time, as recently seen in conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.”
Briefings on responses
Notably, the draft NDAA measure would require the Defense secretary and the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to choose four facilities or assets in the United States where counter-drone systems will be deployed within a year of the fiscal 2026 NDAA’s enactment.
The report would direct the Government Accountability Office to assess how U.S. military training is adjusting to the changes in warfare driven by unmanned systems.
The measure would also require a report from the Pentagon on China’s capability to disrupt U.S. command, control, communications, intelligence and reconnaissance systems–including via jamming of signals, known as electronic warfare.
The draft NDAA report contains more than a half dozen mandates for Defense Department officials to brief lawmakers on how the Pentagon is addressing the pressing changes in warfare, including required updates on:
•How the department is responding to lessons learned from drone warfare in Ukraine and the Middle East by improving U.S. “doctrine, planning, training, and equipping” in response.
•How the department and the wider U.S. government is progressing at keeping western technologies out of the Iranian drones that are wreaking damage in multiple conflicts.
•How the Army plans to expand and diversify its systems for countering drone attacks.
•The Air Force’s plans for defending bases against aerial attacks by using a land-based version of the Navy’s Phalanx air defense weapon, a cannon that can shoot down artillery rounds, mortars, rockets and drones and that the Army is also using.
•How the U.S. military plans to operate its own drones and loitering munitions when they are contested by jamming.
•The feasibility of land-based systems that could replace GPS for navigation and timing if the satellite signal is jammed or otherwise unavailable.
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