The vulnerability of US military bases to weaponized drones

From protecting aircraft to submarines, "what I can tell you is that it’s not enough,” says James Poss, the U.S. Air Force's former Assistant Deputy Chief of Intelligence.

Sailors work on the ballistic missile submarine USS Nevada docked at Naval Base Kitsap in Washington in 2023. (Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Adora Okafor)

How easy would it be for a swarm of drones to attack a military base in the United States?

I started asking the question after Operation Spider Web in June. Ukraine’s flurry of smuggled drones emerged off of trucks in Russia to destroy some of the enemy’s most important long range bombers. “That has to be terribly worrying to every country in Europe and North America,” historian Phillips O’Brien was quick to observe.

I wanted to understand the extent of the vulnerability in the United States. And some of the country’s leading voices could not have been more blunt. “The next attack on the U.S. won’t come from across the continent with ballistic missiles, it’s going to come from across the parking lot,” James Poss, the former Assistant Deputy Chief of Intelligence for the U.S. Air Force and former Air Combat Command Director of Intelligence, told me in a phone call from an airport lounge.

Now the CEO at an intelligence, drone, and cyber warfare consulting firm called ISR Ideas, James said that drone warfare between Ukraine and Russia shows how you can “zip through each other’s defenses like tissue paper.”

The CIA’s former Chief of Counterterrorism, Bernard Hudson, shared his concern. He is now the CEO of a company called Advanced Archer, advising on the design and use of drones. Back in 2021, he told me that anyone could have their own air force with drones.

He spoke of lone actors, aggrieved groups, and nation states. But today, the U.S. has to be especially attuned to Iran, which expanded its drone program over the years, has launched drones directly and indirectly against U.S. bases abroad, and could someday widen its retaliation after the U.S. deployed bunker-buster bombs on its nuclear facilities.

“It doesn't require much money and they’ve got enough animosity to the American government that they could put together a credible plan like this,” Bern told me. “Their greatest vulnerability is probably keeping their human sources from being compromised while they’re operating in the U.S.”

Easy entry by land, air, and sea

To start, Bern told me that, as in Ukraine’s operation, drone parts would be easy to smuggle into the United States over land through Mexico or Canada.

I asked U.S. Customs and Border Protection if officers are educated in identifying drones and drone parts at the border. “To protect law enforcement-sensitive and business-confidential data, CBP cannot release further details or strategies concerning trade enforcement,” a spokesperson told me by email. That also includes specific law enforcement procedures, the spokesperson added.

Okay. There is also air and sea. “You could actually just fly [a drone] across the border in its already weaponized state and have somebody pick it up, because there’s almost no way to detect these things when they fly across America’s very large borders,” Bern said. “The radar systems necessary to cover this amount of border for something so small would be very difficult to deploy.”

A person could also slowly bring in drone components on shipping containers, then place them at hidden sites. Or in a more bold move, a person could also launch drones from a ship near the U.S. coastline.

A bad actor could also just use a 3D printer from inside the U.S. It would not necessarily raise red flags because drones have hobbyist applications. Don’t forget about the black market, Bern said.

Weaponizing a drone

Bringing in drones may not present many challenges. What about their payload? That is ultimately the differentiating factor when it comes to weaponization. Bern said crude explosives aren’t hard to build, and the chemicals have a completely legitimate commercial use which can be repurposed.

He also described what Ukrainian forces have pioneered. “Dropping highly intense, flammable materials from a drone onto targets, stuff that can’t be put out with water.” He means making a commercial version of thermite or white phosphorous.

Three sites that are especially vulnerable

Both Bern and James described locations that a bad actor may be most tempted to target.

The first are high performance military aircraft parked on tarmacs. “If it’s not in a hangar or if it is not in a hardened facility, it’s parked in the open — which lots of aircraft are for a lot of their work time,” Bern said. They can be made “very vulnerable very fast.”

James told me, “We’ve got no physical defenses against these aircraft except a few places that have hardened aircraft shelters.”

The second targets are nuclear submarines on dry docks for maintenance, repairs, and crew rotations. Bern mentioned the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Hampton Roads in Virginia, as well as Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state.

The submarines are designed to withstand great pressures at depth but they are not impervious to attack. “You strike the hull of a nuclear submarine, it will do enough damage that they can’t put it out to sea,” Bern said. “And suddenly you’ve lost the ability to deploy one of your strategic nuclear deterrence assets. That’s not at all implausible to do with the tech available right now. It doesn’t have to sink the ship.”

James was unable to speak of protections to submarines but said, “Every time you open a hatch on a sub, you’ve got to be careful.”

Last is the power grid. And substations in major cities are vulnerable. The first drone attack on a substation happened in Pennsylvania in 2020. It was unclear who was behind it. Another incident was thwarted by the FBI in Nashville last year.

The skeptics

An intelligence officer with knowledge of the Virginia bases was skeptical. The person, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Norfolk’s terrain was relatively flat, with tree cover. That Hampton Roads has a significant Special Operations Forces presence.

But even more, the officer felt the capability has been available for a long time now without much incident — though a high alert or armed conflict with an adversary could that calculation.

“I find it a low probability concern in the current political picture, when our historical adversaries are largely being appeased. Not much reason to raise the temperature by hitting a target on U.S. soil when the U.S. posture is increasingly isolationist. All that would do is mess up a good thing for China and Russia.”

The officer agreed that terrorists may still try and that Iran is a wildcard, but believed Tehran would not want to be a target because its military ranks, capabilities, and proxy groups have been degraded by Israel’s operations.

Precedent

Drones have lingered of U.S. bases, potentially gathering intelligence. Last year, a mysterious fleet of drones flew for days over Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline. None were taken down, and it is still unclear who was launching them.

In 2023, a drone of Iranian origins killed a U.S. contractor in Syria. And since Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, U.S. and coalition forces have experienced at least 216 Iranian-backed (drone, rocket, and missile) attacks in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, according to the Jewish Institute of National Security of America.

Let’s also go back to 2017, when a photographer literally landed a drone on one of Britain’s most powerful warships, the HMS Queen Elizabeth. “And no one batted an eyelash,” apparently.

The Pentagon and physical, mental, legal, and financial barriers

“I don’t think anybody has invented a weapon that could defend against a large drone swarm,” James told me. “I don’t know exactly what the Air Force or Navy or Army has deployed, but what I can tell you is that it’s not enough given the threat.”

He compared the efforts to analysis conducted on threat of shoulder-launched missiles. “I know nobody is going out and doing this vast footprint examination to where you can fly these smaller drones,” he said.

I reached out to the Defense Department, but did not receive a reply back. I also contacted Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Hampton Roads to ask about protecting subs. One person not authorized to speak on the matter told me that it was a difficult question to answer.

Efforts to address the risk of drone attacks have been increasing. Last December, the Biden administration announced a Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems — which included degrading threat networks and defending against drone threats. Central Command, under the Trump administration, wants to advance its counter-drone arsenal after Operation Rough Rider — laser-guided rocket systems on F-15s and F-16s which took down Houthi attack drones in and near the Red Sea.

James says the Pentagon is putting a tremendous amount of research into solutions, from lasers to high-powered microwaves, with the Army taking the lead. It is pursuing proximity fuses, which detonate close to a target as opposed to on impact, for maximal damage. The Navy once pursued a hypersonic rail gun program, but ditched it a few years ago. The rounds of research still show promise for countering drones.

But there is a catch to the remedies, James tells me. “Here in the continental U.S., we’ve got to develop weapons and defensive procedures that will work in and amongst the American people.” That includes American infrastructure. And it is no easy task.

He believes that Ukraine’s unprecedented drone attack on Russian airfields relied on Russian cell phone networks. And that an adversary would do the same, using U.S. cell networks in the United States. And “who in their right mind would turn off an entire cell phone network… That’s what you’d have to use to stop these guys.” Defense using high-powered microwave weapons would also destroy friendly electronics within a possible 5-mile radius of defended zones — “a death beam” for electronics, he said.

Bern also brought up drones that rely on cables, now deployed on the battlefield in Ukraine. “Their command signal is a piece of fiber optic cable that’s very thin, that spools out behind [the drone]. And you can’t see it, it doesn’t emanate into the broader atmosphere or the radio spectrum. So it’s essentially a hidden signal. There’s currently no defense against any of that.”

‘Who would take on this mission? And how expensive is it?’

James spoke of overwhelm among U.S. military personnel. There are just so many vast and urgent threats to worry about and “folks defending these bases throw up their hands.”

Bern said there is no entity or individual with a nationwide mandate. “There’s been a lot of talk about at least doing better on the detection piece. The problem is who would take on this mission? And how expensive is it to defend everything or to monitor everything or to put up those detectors everywhere?”

Disagreement persists on the urgency of the threat, when so many other threats are competing. So Bern said, “It’s probably going to take a tragedy.”