• The US military has confirmed recent drone activity around bases in New Jersey.
• The Pentagon said this week that it sent counter-drone technology to two installations.
• One of these systems has been identified as the Dronebuster, a hand-held electronic warfare tool.

The Pentagon is arming two military installations in New Jersey with counter-drone technology, giving them extra tools to better defend their airspace from any unauthorized drone incursions. One of the systems the Pentagon mentioned by name is the Dronebuster.

The US military confirmed drone sightings at Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle this month, as well as multiple sightings at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, with drones at one point forcing the base to close its airspace. A spokesperson for the Joint Staff said last weekend that drone activities over bases are not a new issue but criticized some of the recent incidents as "irresponsible."

Amid recent drone drama, there have been repeated calls to shoot down unidentified aircraft, particularly those near military bases.

The Pentagon said this week that "if a determination is made that unauthorized drones are conducting any malign or malicious activity, commanders are authorized to take appropriate action to mitigate and counter these unmanned systems," but the military is not going to be engaging anything kinetically, a spokesperson added, unless it is a "clear and present danger."

Military bases have some existing capabilities to deal with drone incursions, but the Pentagon acknowledged that sending more technology will help them mitigate potential threats.

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said that the military is providing "active and passive detection capabilities" and "counter-drone capabilities" to Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Ryder identified one of these tools as the Dronebuster, a newer piece of counter-drone tech that "employs non-kinetic means to interrupt drone signals" and affects the aircraft's ability to operate. Picatinny did not confirm any of the specific systems it is obtaining but said that it is "strengthening its counter-UAS capabilities to detect and mitigate drone incursions." BI was unable to reach Naval Weapons Station Earle.

The Dronebuster device is a hand-held electronic warfare system developed by the American company Flex Force. When a user points the lightweight device that first came online in 2016 at a drone, the weapon emits a signal that cuts the connection between the drone and its operator. It's in use with various military services.

The US Army trains service members to counter drones using the Dronebuster in tandem with a Smart Shooter system — a rifle with a special optic that tracks the drone, calculates its trajectory, and tells the user when they have a good chance of hitting it with a bullet. BI observed this training firsthand at the Joint C-sUAS (Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft System) University, or JCU, which is a new US Army initiative based at Fort Sill.

Beyond the US military, security personnel and first responders can also use the Dronebuster as a portable jammer system when facing a threat. The radio frequency jammer has evolved over the years, becoming several times more powerful than the earlier models and more rugged for a range of counter-drone operations.

Ryder said that the device is "a methodology that we have that is able to essentially bring drones down non-kinetically should we need to do that."

For the military, maintaining a robust counter-drone capability is becoming essential as drone technology becomes more prolific. The low cost of these systems makes them readily available for hobbyists and malign actors alike. Terrorists and insurgencies have weaponized small drones in Middle East combat, and in the Ukraine war, cheap, off-the-shelf hobby-style drones easily bought for a few hundred dollars are engaging in everything from surveillance to precision strike.

Drone activity over and around US bases has long been an issue for the military and is not limited to the New Jersey and Ohio incidents.

In recent weeks, suspected drones have also been spotted at US bases overseas. Such activity presents a growing problem for the military, as drones can spy on its assets, like aircraft, or hazard its operations. As drone usage continues to proliferate, the Pentagon is seeking out ways to better its approach to countering unmanned systems.

"I think we've all recognized the fact that unmanned systems are here to stay," Ryder said this week. "They're a part of modern warfare, and whether it's here in the homeland or overseas, we want to make sure that we're doing due diligence to protect our forces and protect our equities from a national security standpoint."

It can be a challenge to respond stateside, though.

"When we're here in the homeland, the authorities that the US military has to detect and track these kinds of things is much different than it would be if we were in a combat zone. In other words, the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that we can employ outside the United States are much different, for very good reasons," Ryder said.

The drone activity at Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle comes amid a flurry of reported drone sightings across the East Coast over the past few weeks. A range of federal agencies have determined that the sightings are not nefarious, despite speculation to the contrary, and include commercial drones, hobbyist drones, law enforcement drones, manned aircraft, helicopters, and even stars.

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Monday that "we have not identified anything anomalous or any national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast." The FBI, Homeland Security, and Department of Defense have argued the same.

• Rapid advances have turned drones into aerial spies and flying bombs.
• They pose increasing risks to governments, companies, and public utilities.
• Defense companies like MARSS and Dedrone sell systems designed to defeat drones.

Attack drones are evolving so rapidly in the cauldrons of combat in the Middle East and Ukraine that militaries and even law enforcement agencies see a pressing need for defenses.

Companies are rushing to meet these needs even as unmanned aerial vehicles continue to change rapidly to exploit vulnerabilities.

"That's essentially been what we've been trying to do over the last decade — play catch up — and the UAV threats have always been able to stay one step ahead of the counter-[unmanned aerial systems] systems as we're developing them," said Jamey D. Jacob, a mechanical engineer who is director of Oklahoma State University's Unmanned Systems Research Institute.

This demand for defenses is a booming area where start-ups and newer companies compete with the largest defense contractors to build the sensors and weapons to defeat drones and the AI-assisted networks that integrate them into a clear picture for a human operator.

The typical ways to counter drones can be broken into four steps: detect, track, identify, and mitigate threats. Sensors like radars and cameras are essential to the first three tasks. The final step to stop the threat can be accomplished via frequency jamming and electronic warfare (soft-kill) or by physically damaging it (hard-kill).

One company specializing in creating the battlefield awareness systems to spot and defeat drones is MARSS, a global defense technology company.

MARSS' technology is designed to detect, analyze, and annotate the heaps of data collected by its integrated systems and present it in a way "that the drone operator could understand it extremely easily," said Josh Harman, Vice President of Business Development at MARSS Group.

"What was happening when the drone threat started to continually evolve and get more complicated, you had to turn drone sensor solutions into a layered defense solution," he added.

The defense tech company focuses on developing counter-drone platforms that detect threats for civilian, government, and military clientele.

Earlier this year, MARSS showcased its AI-driven NiDAR counter-drone system at the Red Sands military drills in Saudi Arabia, jointly run by Saudi armed forces and the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command.

"Over the course of the Red Sands exercise, MARSS demonstrated multi-sensor integration on a single UI that was mature and devastatingly effective against the various air threats — reducing the decision cycle of 'detect to defeat' to a matter of seconds," Harman told UASWeekly at the time.

'Golden age of aviation'

Drone defenses are difficult and iterative simply because they are counters to technology that's leaping ahead.

The flexibility and cost-effectiveness of UAVs has ushered in a "new golden age of aviation where you can come up with really neat ideas that you weren't able to develop a decade ago," said Jacob, the UAV expert at OSU.

"What we see in the drone industry is really flipping this conventional aircraft design cycle on its head, which is really what allows new companies to compete because they could be much more nimble and don't have to have the big development budgets that are necessary for the development of full-scale manned aircraft," Jacob told Business Insider in an interview.

The drone makers and pilots are devising ways to dominate the battlefield while drone defenders try to figure out how to neutralize them in a game of spy-vs-spy that has implications far beyond the battlefield. Drone defenses range from radiofrequency detectors to jammers and guns. MARSS sees an opportunity to network them together into an integrated, operator-controlled network.

"Most companies in the market were building specific sensors, whether it be radars, radio frequency, directed energy, kinetic energy, kinetic guns, missiles, or whatever it may be," said MARSS's Harman. "Essentially, you had a lot of different systems out there working independently, not in sync, and you had a low success rate across not only all the US services but also the international services as well."

Another defense company has developed its drone shields from combat use in Ukraine.

Virginia-based drone company Dedrone by Axon has integrated artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions into its open-architecture counter-drone platforms.

"When you think about our use across the world — both on the public safety side, but especially on the national security side — by virtue of being in situ, not only does our AI-ML machine get smarter every day, but we are also able to benefit and improve our system at that same pace that the drones are evolving in the conflict zones," said Mary-Lou Smulders, CMO and head of government affairs at Dedrone.

Dedrone allows a buyer, such as an airport authority or electrical power plant, to set up a network of sensors and jammers and have AI guide the user to quickly identify and respond to threats it detects.

MARSS also says its counter-drone networks are enhanced by supervised machine learning and AI skillset to alert the user sooner.

"It's a big, big deal when you can extend the range on detection, you give the operator a lot more time to act accordingly and to lower any mistakes," Harman said. "When you can eliminate a large portion of all the false positives, you allow the operators to focus on what they need to focus on."