Drone infiltration of DC army base’s airspace exemplifies threat of readily available UAVs — expert

A drone infiltration of an army base’s airspace in Washington, DC, exemplifies the potential threat from readily available, non-military drones, an expert says.

US officials earlier today detected unidentified drones above the army base where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth live, according to The Washington Post.

Details about the incident are still scant, including whether the drones were nefarious or linked to any foreign actors.

Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, DC, research institute, warned about potential threats from off-the-shelf drones in an interview with The Times of Israel yesterday.

Bondar is a former adviser to the Ukrainian government who has studied drone warfare in Ukraine and written about Iranian drone warfare.

She said yesterday that Iran probably cannot attack the US homeland with its military drones, but that bad actors could utilize commercially available drones from within the US.

“A threat that everyone here is underestimating is bringing a striking capability here,” she said. “Not only Iran, but anyone can do that, especially taking into account that the US doesn’t have any internal countermeasures.”

Assailants could bring a drone to within a couple of kilometers from a target, so the short, speedy flight would evade air defenses, she said.

“It will take a minute, and no air defense will be able to react. Even if they want to strike a military facility, nothing can react and intercept that,” she said. “It’s small. Radars are not adapted to this kind of identification. They look like birds.”

After today’s drone scare over the military base, Bondar says, “This is what I mean when thinking of a realistic scenario of a drone threat.”