{"id":4642289,"date":"2026-07-09T11:31:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T09:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/air-force-battle-lab-counter-drone-options-2026\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T11:31:45","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T09:31:45","slug":"air-force-battle-lab-counter-drone-options-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/air-force-battle-lab-counter-drone-options-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"The Air Force Goes Shopping for New Ways to Kill Drones"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style><p>The aircraft that worries American air base commanders most in 2026 is not a Chinese stealth fighter or a Russian bomber. It is a battery-powered quadcopter that costs less than a used laptop, and there is nothing to stop a hostile one from buzzing the fence line of a base full of billion-dollar jets.<\/p><p>So the U.S. Air Force has set up a lab whose entire job is to figure out how to kill it &mdash; and this month it put out a call to industry for better ways to do so.<\/p><p>The message, roughly: bring us anything that can find a small drone and knock it down, and bring it fast.<\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 24px;margin:24px 0;border-radius:8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 12px;font-weight:700;font-size:18px;color:#333\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px\"><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Who<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#333\">ACC Point Defense Battle Lab, 319th Reconnaissance Wing, Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Mission<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#333\">Defend domestic U.S. Air Force and Space Force bases from drones<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Wants<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#333\">Detection and tracking systems, plus effectors: rockets, interceptor drones, high-energy lasers, high-power microwave<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Vendor deadline<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#333\">31 July 2026<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Exercises<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#333\">About six run in 2026; more scheduled for August and December<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Report due<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#333\">To the ACC commander by the end of 2026<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Red Air, With Quadcopters<\/h2><p>The lab is deliberately unglamorous. Based at Grand Forks and run under Air Combat Command, it pits teams of Airmen playing &ldquo;Red Air&rdquo; &mdash; flying small Group 1 and Group 2 drones, the commercial and light-military classes &mdash; against competing counter-drone systems to see what actually works when a swarm shows up over the flightline. Roughly six such exercises have already run this year.<\/p><p>The point is not just the hardware. It is the human choreography of base defence: who spots the drone, who is allowed to shoot, and how fast the whole chain moves.<\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;The team is gaining a lot of really valuable data &hellip; like what do Airmen do if they see a drone, what does that process look like?&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Senior Master Sgt. BreeAnn Sachs<\/strong> &mdash; ACC Point Defense Battle Lab<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<p>That question sounds simple until you remember that until very recently, defending an air base against something flying meant fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles &mdash; systems designed to kill other jets, not to swat a hobby drone out of the traffic pattern without putting a missile through a hangar.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px\"><img data-opt-id=177147403  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:Hm9E.c3af\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/airmen-red-air-counter-drone-exercise.jpg\" alt=\"Airmen train against small drones in a counter-UAS exercise\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Security forces Airmen drill against small drones &mdash; exactly the Group 1 and 2 threat the Battle Lab is built to defeat. Photo: U.S. Air Force via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Everything That Kills a Drone<\/h2><p>The lab is asking for two things: sensors that detect, identify and track incoming drones, and effectors that destroy them. The effector wish-list reads like a catalogue of the entire counter-drone industry &mdash; guided rockets, drone-on-drone interceptors, high-energy lasers, and high-power microwave weapons that fry electronics across a whole formation at once.<\/p><p>It does not exist in a vacuum. The Pentagon has already begun fielding laser and microwave systems to five installations, stood up dedicated air base air defence units, and &mdash; after replicating a Ukrainian-style drone raid at a Florida range &mdash; concluded that its bases at home are far more exposed than anyone was comfortable admitting. The Battle Lab is where those lessons get turned into a shopping list.<\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uhVPOjbj0dY\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>A snapshot of how fast the counter-drone industry is multiplying, from a 2026 defence exposition.<\/p><h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The Clock Is a Shahed<\/h2><p>The urgency is not theoretical. Cheap one-way attack drones like Iran&rsquo;s Shahed have shown that a few thousand dollars of airframe can threaten targets that used to require a cruise missile, and mysterious drone incursions over U.S. strategic bases have repeatedly gone unpunished for lack of a good way to respond. Every base full of parked aircraft is, from the air, an enormous and largely undefended target.<\/p><p>Industry has until the end of July to answer. The winning ideas get thrown into the August and December exercises, and a report lands on the Air Combat Command commander&rsquo;s desk by year&rsquo;s end. For once, the arms race the Air Force is trying to win is measured not in Mach numbers but in dollars per drone killed &mdash; and it is racing to get that number down before someone else drives it up.<\/p><p><em>Sources: Air &amp; Space Forces Magazine; DefenseScoop; Defense One; U.S. Air Force.<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/7th-infantry-division-multi-domain-command-pacific-drones\/\">The Army Wants to Drown Its Enemies in Drones<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/uk-5-billion-autonomous-drones-defence-investment-plan-2026\/\">The UK&rsquo;s Drones Won&rsquo;t Always Ask Permission to Fire<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The aircraft that worries American air base commanders most in 2026 is not a Chinese stealth fighter or a Russian bomber. It is a battery-powered quadcopter that costs less than a used laptop, and there is nothing to stop a hostile one from buzzing the fence line of a base full of billion-dollar jets. So [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":4642187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[664,670],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4642289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military-aviation","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Air Force Goes Shopping for New Ways to Kill Drones | Afterburner - MiGFlug&#039;s Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The aircraft that worries American air base commanders most in 2026 is not a Chinese stealth fighter or a Russian bomber. 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