Technological Perspectives of Countering UAV Swarms

Conventional AD systems have been found less effective for countering UAVs and loitering munitions. Thishas necessitated the development of counter-UAV systems with different functionalities. A cluster of armed UAVsas swarm formations has further rendered the conventional AD systems far from effective, emphasizing the need to consider countering swarms as the most crucial element in new-generation aerial threat mitigation strategies. In this paper, the capabilities of UAV swarms and vital military assets exposed to such attacks are identified. To protect the vital assets from aerial swarm threats, ideal system characteristics of a counter-UAV (C-UAV) swarm system to overcome the challenges are discussed. Currently available acquisition & engagement technology is analyzed and the application of these systems to counter swarm applications is brought out. New requirements are discussed and a conceptual design of a layered system is derived which can handle a large spectrum of aerial threats including a swarm of UAVs. This system is expected to have a higher rate of engagement and can be designed with low-cost network-integrated systems

Preventing Armageddon I: Enhancing America's Border & Port Security After 9/11; Strategic Insights, v. 3 issue 11 (November 2004)

This article appeared in Strategic Insights, v.3 issue 11 (November 2004)Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Fifty feet above the wall: cartel drones in the U.S.-Mexico border zone airspace, and what to do about them

Over the last decade, the U.S. military and homeland security research groups have contemplated the issue of how to counter unmanned drones. Recently, border security agencies responsible for securing the U.S.–Mexico border are having to contend with the emerging threat of Mexico’s drug cartel narcotics-smuggling drones, also known as narco-drones. Narco-drones are an example of cartel innovation for smuggling, among other deviant purposes, that U.S. border security will need a strategy to counter. This study aimed to build on the conceptual framework related to hostile drones in the airspace and specifically to find a strategy that the Department of Homeland Security could pursue to manage the narco-drone problem in the border-zone airspace. The author argues that the Mexican drug cartels adopt innovative drone tactics in response to border security measures or lack thereof, as well as through organizational learning. This thesis concludes that leveraging U.S. military experience, anti-drone doctrine, and detection assets -developed for countering terrorist drones in the war zones of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan is an effective strategy for countering narco-drones at the U.S.–Mexico border.http://archive.org/details/fiftyfeetbovewal1094558364Lieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles in contemporary armed conflicts : selected issues

Armed conflicts which have been taking place since the end of the Cold War are characterized by, inter alia, the increasing scale of the use of unmanned means and systems, especially unmanned aerial vehicles. Scientists dealing with the history of technology look for the beginning of unmanned aerial vehicles not only in the time of the Second World War, but even earlier, going back to the beginnings of aviation. Undoubtedly, however, the development of unmanned aerial vehicles took place during the Cold War and resulted directly from the experiences of armed clashes in Vietnam, the Middle East and analyses of the hypothetical course of a Third World War. The armed conflicts initiated by the Arab Spring in 2011 and Turkey’s participation in them, the fighting in NagornoKarabakh in 2020 and the conflict in Ukraine have once again demonstrated the growing role of unmanned aerial vehicles used for military purposes. It is worth taking a closer look at the role of unmanned aerial vehicles in the aforementioned armed conflicts and try to answer the question whether they are a miracle weapon like the Excalibur, or rather an element of a more complex system involving the ability to reconnaissance, precision strike and electronic warfare? This issue is all the more interesting as not only United States, Israel, Turkey, and China are producers of effective unmanned reconnaissance and strike systems. This type of modern weapon system is also manufactured in Poland. It has been positively tested in the conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and during the crisis on the border of Belarus and Poland in 2021

Local Government Policy and Planning for Unmanned Aerial Systems

This research identifies key state and local government stakeholders in California for drone policy creation and implementation, and describes their perceptions and understanding of drone policy. The investigation assessed stakeholders’ positions, interests, and influence on issues, with the goal of providing potential policy input to achieve successful drone integration in urban environments and within the national airspace of the United States. The research examined regulatory priorities through the use of a two-tiered Stakeholder Analysis Process. The first tier consisted of a detailed survey sent out to over 450 local agencies and jurisdictions in California. The second tier consisted of an in-person focus group to discuss survey results as well as to gain deeper insights into local policymakers’ current concerns. Results from the two tiers of analysis, as well as recommendations, are provided here

GPS Anomaly Detection And Machine Learning Models For Precise Unmanned Aerial Systems

The rapid development and deployment of 5G/6G networks have brought numerous benefits such as faster speeds, enhanced capacity, improved reliability, lower latency, greater network efficiency, and enablement of new applications. Emerging applications of 5G impacting billions of devices and embedded electronics also pose cyber security vulnerabilities. This thesis focuses on the development of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) Based Anomaly Detection and corresponding algorithms for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). Chapter 1 provides an overview of the thesis background and its objectives. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the 5G architectures, their advantages, and potential cyber threat types. Chapter 3 addresses the issue of GPS dropouts by taking the use case of the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) airport. By analyzing data from surveillance drones in the (DFW) area, its message frequency, and statistics on time differences between GPS messages were examined. Chapter 4 focuses on modeling and detecting false data injection (FDI) on GPS. Specifically, three scenarios, including Gaussian noise injection, data duplication, data manipulation are modeled. Further, multiple detection schemes that are Clustering-based and reinforcement learning techniques are deployed and detection accuracy were investigated. Chapter 5 shows the results of Chapters 3 and 4. Overall, this research provides a categorization and possible outlier detection to minimize the GPS interference for UAS enhancing the security and reliability of UAS operations