House panel hears DOD officials warn of faster, cheaper drone threats and press for procurement, policy fixes

Top Defense officials told the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces that small unmanned aerial systems, including cheap, mass-produced drones, are a rapidly escalating threat overseas and inside the United States and that the department must move faster to field countermeasures.

The witnesses — including Defense Innovation Unit Director Michael Beck, Lieutenant General Eric Austin of the Marine Corps, Lieutenant General Robert Collins of the Army, and Major General David Stewart, director of the Joint Counter-UAS Office — described advances in sensor, decision and defeat capabilities, a need for flexible funding and acquisition reforms, and ongoing initiatives to deliver lower-cost, low-collateral counter-UAS tools to protect bases and forces.

Why it matters: Members repeatedly cited recent incursions at installations such as Joint Base Langley–Eustis and Picatinny Arsenal as examples of how small, commercially available UAS are being used to probe defenses and, in some cases, conduct sustained operations against U.S. facilities. Committee members signaled they plan to press the issue in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including refining authorities tied to “130i” and other installation protections.

Beck, director of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), told the subcommittee the pace and scale of UAS production and tactics — an evolution he said he observed firsthand in Ukraine — outstrips traditional defense acquisition timelines. “We must put capability in place now,” Beck said,…