WASHINGTON \u2014 The US military needs to quickly develop affordable methods to counter small unmanned drones used by Islamic State terrorists to move explosives into an area, the Air Force’s top civilian urged Monday.
In a separate incident about a week ago, the Air Force was notified about a potential Islamic State UAS threat, she said. The service was able to bring the it down “fairly quickly” through “electronic measures,” she said, declining to comment further on the tactics or weapon systems used to defeat the drone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
James stressed that potential solutions do not have to be kinetic. “You don’t necessarily have to shoot,” she said. “There’s a variety of ways to attack the problem and what we need to do is put our best thinking together and focus on it going forward into the future.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Concerns about the Islamic State\u2019s use of unmanned aircraft is not limited to one particular service. The Pentagon in July requested an additional $20 million for the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization (JIDO) to develop and buy counter-UAS technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Army is at work on a strategy for defeating small UAS, with the document awaiting signature from senior service officials before publication, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the service\u2019s capability integration center director, said earlier this month. The service\u2019s new Rapid Capabilities Office will also explore the problem and help develop new ways to overwhelm enemy drones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And during the CNAS event, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus pointed to another emerging technology that could one day be used to shoot down small UAS: directed-energy weapons like the Laser Weapons System, which has been installed aboard the USS Ponce since 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US military needs to quickly develop affordable methods to counter small unmanned drones used by Islamic State terrorists to move explosives into an area, the Air Force\u2019s top civilian urged Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":29237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[15,88],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3297],"class_list":["post-52762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-military"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"OTYZMAMJSBH63JD2GR47H26NN4","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2016\/10\/24\/air-force-scrambles-to-defeat-islamic-state-s-flying-bomb-drones\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n