“For decades, American air and space power has often operated from a position of sanctuary. Those days are over. We can no longer treat point defense as a side hustle. We must make it a core function of air and space power.” General Kenneth Wilsbach, CSAF, U.S. Air Force, September 14, 2026
This year’s Air and Space Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference addressed the counter-unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) challenge head-on. After the Air Force Chief of Staff’s proclamation, a panel discussion composed of industry leaders and the commander of the Air Force Point Defense Battlelab discussed the challenges of defending air bases in the United States. The panel experts agreed that the hard problems in homeland counter-UAS are no longer technical. They are about policy, trust, and the community outside the fence. The continental United States is no longer a sanctuary. Cheap, fast, and capable drones make every base a potential target, with one-way attack drones able to be launched from positions just outside base fence lines.
A Proving Ground Two Decades in the Making
The panel’s discussion centered on Grand Forks Air Force Base, home of the 319th Reconnaissance Wing and Air Combat Command’s (ACC) Point Defense Battle Lab. ACC asked for a wing to accelerate counter-drone work with no additional money or people. Grand Forks was chosen largely because of GrandSKY, a drone research park across the runway where roughly 25 organizations have spent a decade learning to operate alongside the military. (See prior AG coverage of GrandSKY’s counter-UAS efforts).
The Battle Lab is a whole-wing effort, partnered with the Kansas Air National Guard’s 184th Wing. Airmen from many career fields learn vendor systems, stress-test them, and build tactics from what they observe. That work recently produced a milestone: directed energy employed in FAA-controlled airspace rather than on a restricted range.
Why Home Is Harder
At home, defenders lack the electromagnetic spectrum and environmental control they assume overseas. Spectrum is shared, airspace belongs to the FAA, and every engagement happens near neighborhoods and airports. Electronic jamming may bring detrimental effects. One spectrum band may knock friendly aircraft offline, while adversary drones simply hop frequencies.
That shifts the weight to everything “left of the decision”: detecting, tracking, visually verifying targets, and settling rules of engagement in advance. Section 130i of Title 10 provides the authority, but the Services are only now learning to exercise it safely alongside the FAA, the FCC, and local law enforcement.
No Silver Bullet
No single system solves the problem. Defenses must be layered and degrade gracefully, keeping coverage when aircraft are grounded by weather or radars are jammed. Critical zones warrant the most aggressive pre-authorized defenses. And the kill chain is shrinking from minutes to seconds, too fast for step-by-step human decisions.
Human Before the Loop
That time pressure drove a discussion on autonomy. Human-in-the-loop control breaks down against multiple simultaneous threats. Human-on-the-loop, where the system recommends a course of action and the operator selects it, is an intermediate step. The most ambitious concept was “human before the loop”: humans set the rules, governance, and limits in advance, and machines then engage with near-full autonomy.
Moving along that spectrum is a question of risk tolerance, with the specific type of effector driving much of the discussion. Kinetic interceptors over American communities carry real collateral risk. Directed energy, with low or no collateral effects, makes greater autonomy far easier to accept.
Trust Is Earned on the Range
Directed energy does not outrange kinetic interceptors, so using it well means holding fire and letting threats come closer, trusting the system to defeat them. The panel’s discussion highlighted cost asymmetry as a magazine-depth problem. For the battle captain, the issue is not the price of each shot but reload time, flyout time, and shot doctrine against drones arriving in numbers. Directed energy preserves scarce interceptors for the threats that truly need them. The only path to that trust is relentless testing and local exercising.
Fusion, AI Agents and Resilience
Layered defense requires many types of sensors, and operators cannot instantly absorb multiple data streams. Sensor fusion into one coherent threat picture is absolutely necessary and makes rapid decisions possible.
The panel looked ahead to AI agents that reason through fused data, policy, and approval chains, while cautioning that the field is young. Resilience is paramount. Russia’s loss of Starlink access, communications failures in U.S. exercises, and a reported strike on a Jordanian cloud data center all show that counter-UAS AI must run at the edge and keep working as networks degrade.
The Community Outside the Fence
Defending against drones launched from beyond the perimeter requires seeing beyond it. Grand Forks treats this as a matter of transparency, building ties with the sheriff’s department, local officials, fence-line neighbors, and the University of North Dakota. Community confidence and operator confidence come from the same sources of demonstrated safety, clear governance, and accountability.
What Comes Next
The community has moved past asking what technologies to use. The work now involves policy, followed by rigorous training that builds trust. That means settling rules of engagement and spectrum arrangements for civilian airspace, making 130i authorities routine, designing integrated architectures that degrade gracefully, and building edge AI with deliberately defined decision rights. Installations should inject AI and autonomy into exercises, invest in transparent community relationships, and engage an eager defense-tech sector.
As highlighted by the Air Force Chief of Staff, counter-UAS defense is not a “side hustle.” It only takes one bad event for everyone to understand the threat. The goal is to build the policy, architecture, and trust before that event arrives.