The Air Force wants to funnel $1.4 billion into air base defense with new weapon systems designed to protect homeland installations and forward-deployed airfields against drones and missile threats, Air Force budget officials said April 21.
air base defense
A new Air Force organization is searching for counter-drone firms to participate in a dozen or more exercises to help create operating plans by the end of this year for defending the service’s U.S.-based installations from drone attacks.
The need to defend air bases was made painfully clear at Hickam Field in December 1941. Yet even now we continue to park aircraft in the open, often wingtip-to-wingtip, all over the country and have essentially no way of providing terminal defense against air attack.
The Air Force hopes to snag $836 million in fiscal 2026 for rapidly deployable air base defenses to thwart incoming drones and missiles.
Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb attack on Russian air bases is causing the Pentagon to revise its approach to air and homeland defense.
Experts Warn of Pacific Threats By Matthew Cox Ukraine’s drone strike on Russian bomber bases didn’t just shock Russia—it also raised alarm among U.S. officials concerned that American military installations could also be vulnerable to attack. Nicknamed “Operation Spiderweb,” the...
Defense experts say the drone threat represents only part of a larger, looming problem: U.S. air bases in the Pacific are increasingly vulnerable to air attacks.
As innovative as Ukraine's drone attack on Russia's bomber fleet was, it's not a template for how the U.S. should conduct air wars, two experts said.
Pentagon officials overseeing homeland counter-drone strategy told lawmakers that even with preliminary moves to bolster U.S. base defenses, the military still lacks the capability to comprehensively identify, track, and engage hostile drones like those that breached the airspace of Langley Air Force Base in Virginia ...
Small drones were spotted flying over Air Force bases in Utah, Ohio, and Germany this month, Air & Space Forces Magazine has confirmed—in addition to the arrest of a Chinese citizen who allegedly used a drone to snap photos of a Space Force base—as a ...
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said he'd be “comfortable’ with the service taking over the air base defense mission from the Army, provided it was given the resources and manpower to do so. The Army has been slow to devote the resources and attention needed ...
The Army is expanding and transforming its air and missile defense forces, in part to meet the needs of Air Force plans for dispersing to an expanded network air bases across the Indo-Pacific, senior officials said Oct. 14. Just how much protection it can provide ...