During a House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) questioned witnesses about drone incursions into US military installations.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to briefly comment about the previous questioner.
00:05Once again, going with the woke media story and not bothering to mention the success of
00:13the strikes which restored freedom of navigation, protected shipping lanes, kept Americans safe,
00:19nor do you bother to mention that the encrypted service that was being used was one recommended
00:26by the previous administration, DHS guidance. But my questions with regard to this topic
00:35is for both of you, and this is the context. So can we, do we have the technology to discover
00:46that there is UAVs in the neighborhood of our bases?
00:50Yes, Congressman, we do.
00:56Okay. And can we track, if the UAV is there, can we track it? We have the technology to track it?
01:03Yes, Congressman.
01:07Okay. And then you could interdict it if you chose to at every base?
01:12We have different options for interdiction congressmen across a spectrum for the commander
01:18to use their base judgment. But you could interdict if you chose, if you so chose. And you have
01:24authorities under 130i perhaps, depending on the commanding chain there, right? I mean, you could make that point, right?
01:34Depending upon the installation, whether it's a covered installation, Congressman, you would have the 130i
01:39additional authorities. But as the admiral has said, there's always the ability to respond if there's hostile intent for that base commander.
01:47But you have to determine hostile intent, and that's the problem, right?
01:51Admiral Spadaro, could you explain how unauthorized drone activity, even when it's caused by recreational
01:57or commercial users, diverts critical security resources away from responding to legitimate national
02:02security threats, please?
02:03Yes, Congressman, thank you for your question. If we go back to New Jersey and, you know, that activity,
02:09once the FAA put the temporary flight restrictions in place, and there was, you know, very broad and comprehensive
02:15coverage of that by the media. Many of you spoke about it. Many of the members of Congress talked
02:20about the anxiety that was building in the community due to the high level of sightings.
02:25Once that word got out, that public messaging about responsible drone use, once the word got out
02:31about the flight restrictions, we saw a rapid decline in the number of sightings. The drone activity
02:36essentially went away. And we don't want it to get to the point we have to do that every time.
02:42If we can message to the public that responsible commercial and recreational application of your
02:47drone is an imperative to prevent diverting our attention and our resources, both from investment,
02:53training, and response, we're going to be better at defending the homeland. But if we have to
02:58continually be aware of negligent drones flying into our base, it is going to divert attention.
03:04That's not to say that we don't need to address this threat, because as was brought up by this
03:08committee and we agree with, our adversary has demonstrated that they will use this type of
03:15activity for unauthorized surveillance for espionage.
03:18Yeah. And let's add to that for a second. And that is the coupling of AI, which is moving rapidly
03:25forward and providing autonomous navigation, obstacle avoidance, deep learning, computer vision,
03:32detection, easier to become weaponized, real-time image recognition, target identification. So I would
03:41like briefly, if you could, either one of you want to talk about the threat of AI going to coupled with
03:51drone technology to become an increasing, actually exponentially increased threat to our national security.
03:59Congressman, it's a great question. Thank you for that. On the policy side, we need to make sure that
04:09our regulations internally at the DOD are streamlined to the extent that we stay at pace with the threat
04:15that we face outside the fence line of our installations. We need to make sure that we are giving the commanders
04:21on the ground clarity on what they have for authority and providing them the capabilities to counter those
04:27threats. Now, I think the Admiral can speak better as far as what is actually being developed at this
04:31time and how far ahead we are in counter UAS technologies. But as far as the policy purview is
04:38concerned, I know from the Secretary of Defense front office down, we need to give the warfighter every
04:44capability they need to keep our service members safe. I know that I'm not going to have time to
04:50hear your answer. I'm sorry, but with regard to the policy, I would ask that you work with the chairman
04:58of the subcommittee on on policies that need to be rewritten perhaps through legislation that we can do
05:04to facilitate defending against this this combination of AI and drone technology, which is advancing very
05:11rapidly. Mr. Chairman, to that extent, I have some unanimous consent request, if possible.
05:19Yes. The first one is autonomous ascent, how AI is reshaping the future of the UAV industry.
05:26Another piece, mystery drones swarmed a U.S. military base for 17 days.
05:31And next one, what we know about the Langley Air Force base drone incident.
05:35Without objection, so ordered. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.