Abstract Cheap commercial drones, fitted with readily available guidance software, are giving militias and proxies a form of precision strike once reserved for States. Ukraine has already shown the method, which China’s hold on civilian airframes and components makes hard to shut down. UN talks in Geneva can set rules for high-end state systems, but they were not built to police dual-use parts that become weapons only after conversion. The practical response is therefore supply-side: tighter controls on the hardware that makes onboard autonomy work, obligations on manufacturers whose platforms are routinely militarized, and a small coalition of component-producing allies that can move faster than a treaty

Abstract This article draws on #CivilAffairs support to US Special Operations Forces in #Afghanistan in maintaining a commander’s freedom of action by helping mitigate the unintended civil consequences of military operations. It examines consequence management as part of a broader process of assessment, culturally informed engagement, coordination, and command involvement. This article also argues that lessons learned from Afghanistan remain relevant to future operations, where anticipating and responding to civil consequences can help prevent tactical actions from creating subsequent operational constraints.

@SECNAV Hung Cao reported that the USS Theodore Roosevelt deployed on October 8 with a medium unmanned surface vessel, a first for a carrier strike group.

Weaponized cartel drones are proven to have been fielded since October 2017, with the interdiction of a 3DR Solo quadcopter with a papa bomba (potato bomb) along with four Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación(CJNG) operatives in Valtierrilla, Guanajuato during what was essentially a felony stop. As chronicled at SWJ–El Centro over the years, their deployment in Mexico has proliferated over the last decade, increasing in frequency and spreading geographically throughout the country and also to more cartels, their fragments, and operational units. Cartel counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS) capabilities have also developed over this time period as the danger and ‘narco battlefield’ effectiveness of weaponized cartel drones have concurrently increased. To date, the vast majority of news reports, social media posts, and research products have been solely focused on rapidly evolving cartel weaponized drone capabilities—or more recently, the Mexican and US governmental C-CUAS responses against them—rather than on cartel C-UAS capabilities. This short opinion piece will provide a brief overview of where their capabilities have been trending. Very little public analysis has been published on this phenomena, quite possibly due to limited recognition of its importance as well as a lack of specialized expertise. The author’s expertise is derived from an intimate knowledge of cartel technology and weaponry utilization tracked and analyzed at El Centro and C/O Futures, LLC with which he is associated.

Abstract Layered counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) defense commonly combines detection, passive protection, non-kinetic defeat, and kinetic defeat. This essay examines those defensive functions in the specific context of first-person-view (#FPV) drones. This essay distinguishes these functions by their objects of action and identifies the mission environment as an under-articulated object of defensive action. To say that a defensive function “acts upon” an object means that the function is principally designed to change that object’s condition, although it may also produce secondary effects elsewhere. Environmental denial is not proposed as an additional defensive layer of counter-FPV defense. In this essay, layer and function describe different dimensions of defense: a layer identifies where an activity sits within the defensive architecture, whereas a function identifies what the activity is intended to change. Environmental denial is therefore a cross-cutting function rather than a separate layer because it acts on the mission environment across multiple stages of the engagement. By shaping the conditions under which an FPV drone must fly, approach, and attack, it changes the engagement inherited by subsequent defensive functions. #CUAS