A US military exercise called Operation Clear Horizon, inspired by Ukraine’s battlefield tactics, exposed major gaps in American counter-drone defenses. Special Forces used advanced, hard-to-jam drones in a realistic assault, revealing challenges in tracking, coordinating, and defeating diverse UAV threats.
The exercise prompted shifts in Pentagon strategy, including adopting unified drone-tracking systems, prioritizing defenses against long-range and low-cost drones, and accelerating procurement of new counter-UAS technologies, reports Patrick Tucker of Defense News.
Officials say the rapid evolution of drone warfare—driven by commercial innovation—requires faster adaptation and closer integration of offensive and defensive systems. Tucker writes:
In a September exercise on a Florida airfield, members of the 10th Special Forces Group launched a drone assault that mirrored the “spiderweb” attack that Ukraine had recently staged against Russia. The defenders were counter-drone troops from across the U.S. military, trained for a week on tech that the Pentagon has spent billions to develop.
U.S. counter-drone efforts haven’t been the same since. […]
The September exercise in Florida showed that U.S. drone defenders needed a way to combine the data coming in from far-flung radars, drones, and counter-drone systems.
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