Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday ordered the secretary of the Army to set up a special task force to eliminate the threat posed to U.S. military personnel by the types of drones that have wreaked havoc in the war between Ukraine and the invading Russians.
In a video message posted on his X account, Mr. Hegseth formally directed Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll to establish Joint Interagency Task Force 401.
“It’s a new unified team that’s going to bring together our best talent from all our agencies to counter these threats and restore control of our skies,” he said. “Here at the Pentagon, we’re moving fast, cutting through bureaucracy, consolidating resources, and empowering this task force with the utmost authority to outpace our adversaries.”
Drones, officially known as unmanned aerial systems, are a danger to military forces because they provide adversaries with an economical and accessible means to neutralize, surveil and inflict psychological stress on opponents’ troops. They can give a smaller, less powerful army the ability to challenge a technologically superior adversary by exploiting vulnerabilities in high-tech weapons.
An inexpensive drone swarm can exhaust the expensive and limited munitions of high-end air defense systems. The tactic can deplete resources needed for larger threats and expose critical vulnerabilities.
“We can’t shoot a $130,000 missile at a $1,000 drone. We’ve got to get the price point down,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Mingus said last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
The Pentagon has been engaged in an increasingly aggressive push to accelerate the delivery of advanced, small and versatile drone systems to American warfighters across the services.
Gen. Mingus called drones today’s version of improvised explosive devices. The new drone task force comes almost 20 years after the Department of Defense established the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, known as JIEDDO, to counter the growing number of IEDs that were killing American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. Hegseth said the task force will deliver “real solutions” to ensure that the airspace remains secure both in the U.S. and anywhere American troops can be found.
“They deserve to be defended by the best,” he said. “It’s going to put the right tools in the hands of our war fighters to defend that sovereignty and send a clear message to the world that the United States will never be outmatched.”
