Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, is urging the Pentagon to speed up efforts to defend against the growing threat posed by hostile unmanned aerial systems.
In an Oct. 26 letter to Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, Hunter expressed concern about recent incidents involving small UAS flown by non-state actors. On Oct. 2, for instance, an Islamic State UAS armed with explosives killed two Kurdish fighters and wounded two French commandos in Iraq. 
The deadly attack “reveals a new threat from America’s adversaries with access to inexpensive and commercially available unmanned aircraft,” Hunter wrote. It “is my firm belief that we must expedite the development and acquisition of [counter-UAS] technology due to the Islamic State’s use of commercial UAS, as well as the potential for UAS use among other hostile actors.”
Hunter, a Marine combat veteran, expressed support for deploying both directed energy and kinetic defenses against drones, and he asked the Air Force to brief him on efforts to develop and field counter-UAS technology. The congressman, who plans to send similar letters to other defense officials, fears that hostile UAS could eventually rival the ground-based improvised explosive devices that have killed and wounded American and allied troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, an aide said.
Hunter’s letter came two days after James said at a Washington, D.C., think-tank Oct. 24 that the UAS threat is an “emerging danger” and is “an example of something we have to attack quickly.” On Oct. 12, the Defense Department indicated that it recently sent new equipment, including the Battelle DroneDefender, to Iraq to counter Islamic State UAS. DroneDefender is designed to disrupt an adversary’s command-and-control link to a drone.
In August, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued a request for information on technologies that could be fielded in three to four years to detect, identify, track and neutralize small UAS. In addition, DARPA’s new Aerial Dragnet program aims to develop technologies that provide a single, integrated picture of all small UAS flying in a city.