For years, Sen. Tom Cotton has warned about the dangers of unauthorized drones. Now, the Secretary of the Army explains why Cotton is right.
For years, Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) — the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman — has warned about the “severe and growing” dangers posed by unauthorized drones. Now, Cotton is getting backup from none other than the Secretary of the Army.
Dan Driscoll recently noted that “under Secretary of War [Pete] Hegseth, the United States Army has been put in charge of the counter drone threat for the Pentagon, and then we are working…hand in glove with the broader law enforcement agencies. We just last week had a meeting right outside the White House where what we are trying to do, because this problem is different from nearly anything we’ve faced in a long time. It is a flying IED.”
Flying IEDs, the Army Secretary noted, are “cheap,” and anyone can “3D print them at home, and they cross borders incredibly quickly. And so what you basically need is a digital layer to exchange information and exchange sensing and allow the closest person on the ground, or the closest effector on the ground, to be able to take out a drone.”
“Senator Cotton is right,” Driscoll added, calling flying IEDs the “threat of humanity’s lifetime. What’s occurring in Ukraine, what’s happening in Russia, if you look at the speed and scale of the devastation that can come from drones, we as a federal government have got to lead on it.”
Cotton, for his part, noted that “Secretary Driscoll is right. The threat posed by drones is fundamentally different from any we’ve previously seen and requires a new approach to counter it.” The Arkansas lawmaker added that “Congress needs to give law enforcement and the Department of War the tools they need to keep Americans safe.”
The problem that Cotton and Driscoll are spotlighting is far from hypothetical. There were around 400 unauthorized drone flights around approximately 100 American military installations last year alone, according to the Department of War. Additionally, almost 30,000 drones were detected within several hundred feet of America’s southern border in just the second half of 2024.