Why can’t the US military just shoot down the mysterious drones?

“By all indications, (small drones) will pose a safety and security threat to military installations and other critical infrastructure for the foreseeable future,” said NORTHCOM Air Force Chief Gen. Gregory Guillot. told to reporters at the time. “Mitigating those risks requires a dedicated effort by all federal departments and agencies, state, local, tribal, and territorial communities, and Congress to further develop the capacity, coordination, and legal authorities necessary to detect, track, and respond to potential sUAS threats in the homeland.” to solve.”

But US military officials also told reporters that the types of anti-aircraft devices the Pentagon could deploy for internal defense could be limited to non-kinetic “soft kill” means, such as jamming RF and GPS signals and other relatively low-level targets. – technological eavesdropping methods such as networks and: “string lines” due to legal restrictions on the ability to operate drones on American soil.

“The threat and the need to counter those threats is growing faster than existing policies and procedures can keep up,” says Guillot. told journalists during the anti-drone test. “We have a lot of problems in the homeland, it’s a very complicated environment because it’s complicated from a regulatory point of view. It’s not a war zone.”

Defense officials echoed this sentiment at an unveiling of the Pentagon’s new anti-drone strategy in early December.

“The homeland is a very different environment because we have a lot of hobbyist drones here that are not a threat at all, that kind of burden the environment,” said a senior US official. told reporters on time. “At the same time, we have, from a regulatory and intelligence standpoint, quite rightly, (a) more constrained environment in terms of our ability to operate.”

The charter in question, according to defense officials, a specific subsection Title 10 of the U.S. military, known as 130(i), includes military authorities to “protect certain facilities and assets from unmanned aircraft.” It is the right of the U.S. military allows “actions” to be taken to protect against drones, including “controlling drones or drones to disrupt, without prior consent, including by disabling drones or a drone system, by intercepting, interfering with, or causing interference with, wire, verbal, electronic or radio communications used to control a drone system or a drone.” and “use reasonable force against an unmanned aerial vehicle system or drone to disable, damage or destroy an aircraft”.