The US military's drone-defense confusion is leaving its bases vulnerable, Pentagon watchdog finds

A Pentagon watchdog report is warning that gaps in Pentagon policy are leaving some US military bases vulnerable to drone threats.

The report, released Tuesday by the Pentagon’s Inspector General, said that the military lacks consistent guidance for defending sensitive “covered assets” — US-based sites legally authorized to use certain counter-drone defenses — against offensive uncrewed aircraft, a problem exacerbated by jumbled, contradictory policies across the services.

While the Defense Department has issued multiple counter-UAS policies — rules governing how the military can detect, disrupt, or disable uncrewed aerial systems — those directives are not standardized, leaving some base leaders unaware that their installations qualify as “covered assets.” The term refers to locations within the US that deal with sensitive missions like nuclear deterrence, missile defense, presidential protection, air defense, and “high yield” explosives.

That lack of awareness derived from confusing policy risks leaving bases exposed to uncrewed threats, a growing concern.

The Inspector General report examines 10 military installations where drone incursions have occurred. The watchdog assessment found multiple examples of “covered assets” left uncovered due to unclear policies.

The Air Force base in Arizona where most F-35 pilots are trained, for instance, is not authorized to defend against UAS incursions because pilot training does not qualify as a “covered” activity under Pentagon policy, despite the Air Force describing the F-35 as “an indispensable tool in future homeland defense.”

Another Air Force facility in California that manufactures aircraft repair parts, conducts aircraft maintenance, and makes the Global Hawk, an ultra-advanced large surveillance drone that costs more than the F-35Ahas also been left vulnerable, and the site experienced a series of drone incursions in 2024, the report said.

“Air Force officials told us that the government-owned, contractor-operated facility was denied coverage during the active incursions,” in 2024, the IG report says.

The problem extends beyond determining whether a site is covered. The process for obtaining counter-drone systems — and securing rapid legal approval to use them when needed — is complex and slow, reflecting legal restrictions on using electronic jamming or force inside the US, the report found.

The growing counter-drone problem

Concerns about drone threats to military installations have grown in recent years as small, inexpensive commercial drones have become dramatically more popular and easy to use. Such systems lower the barrier to entry on surveillance and precision strike from the state level to non-state actors and can create challenges for security personnel who are often constrained in their response options, or improperly trained and equipped to react.

In 2024, multiple bases within the US and abroad experienced strings of drone incursionsevents that can involve one or more unmanned aircraft entering restricted airspace or operating close enough to installations to trigger alarms, even when the drones are not linked to foreign adversaries.

“In recent years, adversary unmanned systems have evolved rapidly,” a Department of Defense counter-drone strategy released in the final months of the Biden administration said. “These cheap systems are increasingly changing the battlefield, threatening US installations, and wounding or killing our troops.”

Efforts to address the drone problem have been in the works for years, though a Center for New American Security report released last September said the military’s efforts were “hindered by insufficient scale and urgency.”

Some units have received counter-drone tools such as portable “flyaway kits” — deployable systems meant to be moved quickly between sites — and the “Drone Buster,” a handheld electronic-warfare device that emits a signal to disrupt or disable an offending drone. The Army secretary recently questioned the latter system’s effectiveness, underscoring broader uncertainty about how best to defend US bases from the growing drone threat.

The US military is trying to catch up with the threat, to develop defenses as fast or faster than drone technology is currently developing, driven in large part by the drone-dominant Ukraine war. As he announced the creation of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 last August, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said “there’s no doubt that the threats we face today from hostile drones grow by the day.”

“The challenge for airspace management is how to deter or defeat such incursions without endangering the surrounding civilian communities or legitimate air traffic. That rules out everything kinetic,” Mark Cancian, a defense expert and retired US Marine Corps colonel, told Business Insider in late 2024 during a series of incursions.

“This has become a huge problem for both military and civilian airfields and will get worse and drone usage proliferates further,” he said.