U.S. and Japanese service members work together to repair airfield damage during a Keen Sword drill at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, on Oct. 24, 2024. (Jessi Stegall/U.S. Marine Corps)
The U.S. Air Force needs to do more to protect its Indo-Pacific bases, including from evolving threats such as drones, according to a California-based think tank.
The Rand Corp. report — Assessing Progress on Air Base Defense — was released Tuesday and highlights the growing vulnerability of U.S. military installations to low-cost, remote-controlled and autonomous drones, a tactic that has gained prominence in the war in Ukraine.
“It is at the lower end of the capability spectrum that threats may be evolving the most quickly,” the report warns. “Recent experiences in the Russia-Ukraine war are highlighting the threat of small remote control and autonomous drones to air bases, particularly to soft buildings and aircraft parked in the open.”
The report follows a recent Ukrainian drone strike that reportedly damaged or destroyed a portion of Russia’s long-range bomber fleet, raising alarms about the susceptibility of U.S. air assets to similar attacks.
“Russian air base defenders do not appear ready to protect their air bases against the small drones that are destroying their aircraft,” Rand’s report states without referencing the June 1 strike. “To avoid a similar fate on a much larger scale, the U.S. Air Force should conduct a serious cost benefit analysis of fielding its own active defense capabilities, ones that are tailored for air base defense in Pacific and European threat environments.”
While major adversaries like China pose a high-end threat with ballistic and hypersonic weapons, Rand warns that even less capable adversaries could deploy large numbers of drones to autonomously seek and destroy soft targets such as aircraft, fuel depots and control towers.
“China has also demonstrated the use of drone swarms,” the report states. “Its industrial capacity, experience in mass production of drones, and wide-ranging use of machine learning could quickly make it the preeminent producer and user of such systems.”
The report outlines a spectrum of potential threats to U.S. air bases, from hobbyist quadcopters to hypersonic boost-glide missiles.
While the Army leads efforts to counter unmanned aerial systems and has fielded some short-range air-defense systems, Rand emphasized that gaps remain, particularly against smaller drones.
Ongoing projects include the development of directed energy weapons such as lasers to target drones, but the report concludes that passive defense measures remain the most cost-effective option for improving air base resilience.
These measures include hardened shelters, camouflage, decoys, asset dispersal, redundant fuel supplies, runway repair capabilities and blast-resistant construction.
“A combination of both active and passive defense measures is understood to be critical for defending air bases during conflict,” the report states. However, “passive defenses, such as fuel bladders, runway repair, and aircraft shelters have generally been seen as the most cost-effective investment.”
The report recommends increased investment in both active and passive air base defense systems and urges the Defense Department to prioritize passive infrastructure improvements.
It also encourages Pacific Air Forces to work with regional partners and allies to boost installation resilience.
“The potential air base resources in northern Australia could prove critical to resiliency efforts in a potential U.S. war with China,” the report states.
