Air Force unit exploring uses for small drones in Mideast

After struggling to fend off weaponized quadcopters in the Middle East for years, a band of volunteer airmen is trying to flip the script.

The new unit, known as “Task Force 99″ at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, wants the U.S. Air Force to use small, store-bought drones to its own advantage.

“The ability to protect local populations and our bases against small [unmanned aerial systems] is very important,” said Lt. Col. Erin Brilla, the team’s commander. “[How] can we … turn that narrative around and impose dilemmas in the other direction?”

Quadcopters and the like offer several advantages: They are easy to find, cheap to buy, relatively simple to customize and fly, require little upkeep, can be carried essentially anywhere, have a low profile, and are quick to replace.

These lightweight drones are far less sophisticated than the Air Force’s remotely piloted MQ-9 Reaper or RQ-4 Global Hawk. But they can still wreak havoc when outfitted with cameras, radio jammers or explosives, or if they get sucked into and destroy a jet engine.

That’s turned the children’s toy or photographer’s tool into a hallmark of asymmetric warfare over the past decade.

In the coming year, Task Force 99 will mix and match small drones with a variety of low-tech gadgets that could give airmen an upper hand on the battlefield.

Their first attempt involved an electronic warfare tool that can jump radio frequencies and transmit audio or video over those channels, said Capt. Barrett Kopel, the group’s cyber and systems integration chief.

It was cobbled together using “pieces that you would find if you were to go into an old-school RadioShack” and code they found online, Kopel said.

They’re tinkering with the contraption to see if it could block nearby frequencies while riding on a drone, among other possibilities.

“Our first success story, really, is generating and proving that we can take commercial off-the-shelf software, commercial off-the-shelf hardware, and … apply it towards an operational capability,” he said.

Brilla said the group has its first small drone ready to collect unclassified images, but needs approval from the Qatari government to fly near the base.

“It provides orthomosaic and 3D modeling imagery capabilities to look at facilities or landscapes that we’ve previously not been able to access … due to [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance resource] allocation and competing intelligence requirements,” said Capt. Raymond Revell, the group’s intelligence chief.

An orthomosaic, according to the web site dronegenuity.com, is “like Google Earth, but way sharper. It is a large, map-quality image with high detail and resolution made by combining many smaller images called orthophotos.”

The Pentagon’s limited inventory of intelligence assets don’t have the time or bandwidth to map out everything. Drones can help fill that gap so troops can better understand the land around them.

“The biggest takeaway is how cheap these UASs are, because you can employ a number of them for very low cost, and they’re attritable, so you don’t really care if you lose them or not,” Revell said of store-bought drones, which typically retail for less than $1,500. “If you do lose them, whatever capability that your adversary has used to take down that drone likely was slightly more expensive than you fielding that drone in the first place.”

Another perk: Because the system is unclassified, Americans don’t have to withhold as much information from their foreign partners as they would with a more complex machine.

That’s particularly important as U.S. officials hash out the details of how Middle Eastern countries might work together in a regional security collective, making those partner nations less dependent on American forces.

A Middle East air defense alliance would ideally pool resources to secure and monitor the airspace using far fewer U.S. aircraft and sensors than in the past. As part of that effort, Task Force 99 is looking at long-endurance aircraft that can loiter for days and pass the data it collects back to the Air Force.

“It really boils down to making sure that we are making the best use of our resources to ensure that we have a sufficient and sustainable presence here,” Brilla said. “We absolutely need each other.”

The effort comes as the U.S. looks to maintain a smaller overseas footprint in the post-Afghanistan War era. The Pentagon has also begun retiring some of the workhorse drones that have played that surveillance role for years.

Task Force 99 sees those legacy aircraft as useful on their own, but not plentiful or versatile enough to create a true blanket of “eyes in the sky” over a region.

“There’s some interesting, different technologies … that can fly for days,” Brilla said. “We are laying the groundwork for proofs of concept in 2023, probably in succession, to measure them against each other.”

Still, the unit has to figure out how to funnel the data it collects to the rest of the military in a way that is relevant and understandable.

Task force members hope they can succeed where numerous federal programs have failed: Quickly and cheaply getting troops new technology that makes a difference on the battlefield.

Task Force 99 became an official unit in mid-October and moved into its own facilities at the end of 2022. The team of eight Americans, plus three troops from Italy, Canada and the United Kingdom, plans to partner with sister organizations in the Army and Navy and is tapping into the resources offered elsewhere in the military’s “innovation” ecosystem.

Brilla wants to double the size of her team, staying under 20 people, and bring in airmen with experience in support roles like contracting and finance.

“By nature of being in a deployed environment, we will have a somewhat rotational force, which is good because it keeps fresh ideas coming in,” she said. “But we also will need some … continuity going forward.”

Rachel Cohen is the editor of Air Force Times. She joined the publication as its senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), Air and Space Forces Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy and elsewhere.

多年来，一群志愿飞行员一直在努力抵御中东地区武装四轴飞行器的袭击，如今他们正试图扭转局面。

这支名为“第 99 特遣队”的新部队驻扎在卡塔尔乌代德空军基地，希望美国空军能够利用小型市售无人机为自己谋利。

“保护当地居民和我们的基地免受小型无人机系统攻击的能力非常重要，”该小组指挥官艾琳·布里拉中校说。“我们如何才能……扭转这种局面，并向另一个方向提出难题呢？”

四轴飞行器等飞行器具有以下几个优点：容易找到，价格便宜，相对容易定制和飞行，几乎不需要维护，几乎可以随身携带，外形低调，而且更换起来也很快。

这些轻型无人机远不如空军的MQ-9“死神”或RQ-4“全球鹰”遥控无人机先进。但如果它们配备摄像头、无线电干扰器或炸药，或者被吸入并摧毁喷气式发动机，仍然能造成严重破坏。

这使得儿童玩具或摄影师的工具在过去十年中成为了非对称战争的标志。

来年，第 99 特遣部队将把小型无人机与各种低技术设备混合搭配使用，这可以让空军人员在战场上占据优势。

该组织网络和系统集成主管巴雷特·科佩尔上尉表示，他们的第一次尝试涉及一种电子战工具，该工具可以跳跃无线电频率并通过这些频道传输音频或视频。

科佩尔说，它是用“你在老式RadioShack商店里能找到的零件”和他们在网上找到的代码拼凑起来的。

他们正在对这个装置进行调整，看看它是否可以在无人机上运行时屏蔽附近的频率，以及其他可能性。

他说：“我们第一个真正的成功案例是，我们开发并证明，我们可以利用现成的商用软件和硬件，并将其应用于实际操作能力。”

布里拉表示，该组织的第一架小型无人机已经准备就绪，可以收集非机密图像，但需要卡塔尔政府的批准才能在基地附近飞行。

“它提供了正射影像和 3D 建模图像功能，可以查看我们以前由于情报、监视和侦察资源分配和相互竞争的情报需求而无法进入的设施或景观，”该组织情报主管雷蒙德·雷维尔上尉说。

据网站 dronegenuity.com 介绍，正射影像“就像谷歌地球，但清晰度更高。它是一张大型的、地图质量的图像，具有很高的细节和分辨率，由许多称为正射影像的小图像组合而成。”

五角大楼有限的情报资源既没有时间也没有资源去绘制所有地图。无人机可以弥补这一不足，使部队能够更好地了解周围的地形地貌。

“最大的启示在于这些无人机系统非常便宜，因为你可以用极低的成本部署多架，而且它们是消耗品，所以损失多少都无所谓，”雷维尔谈到市售无人机时说道，这些无人机的零售价通常低于1500美元。“如果你真的损失了它们，那么你的对手用来击落这架无人机的任何能力，其成本可能都比你当初部署这架无人机的成本略高一些。”

另一个好处是：由于该系统不属于机密系统，美国人不必像使用更复杂的机器那样向外国伙伴隐瞒那么多信息。

这一点尤其重要，因为美国官员正在商讨中东国家如何在区域安全联盟中合作，使这些伙伴国家减少对美国军队的依赖。

理想的中东防空联盟将汇集资源，以远少于以往的美国飞机和传感器数量来保障和监控空域安全。作为这项工作的一部分，第99特遣部队正在研究能够连续盘旋数天并将收集到的数据传回空军的长航时飞机。

布里拉说：“归根结底，就是要确保我们充分利用资源，从而保证我们在这里拥有充足且可持续的存在。我们绝对需要彼此。”

此举正值美国寻求在阿富汗战争后时代保持较小的海外存在之际。五角大楼也已开始逐步淘汰一些多年来承担侦察任务的主力无人机。

第 99 特遣部队认为这些老式飞机本身很有用，但数量不够多，用途也不够广泛，无法在一个地区上空真正形成一片“空中之眼”。

布里拉说：“有一些很有趣、很独特的技术……可以连续飞行数天。我们正在为2023年的概念验证做准备，可能会分阶段进行，以便对它们进行相互比较。”

不过，该部队仍需想办法以相关且易于理解的方式，将收集到的数据传递给军队的其他部门。

特别工作组成员希望他们能够成功，而许多联邦项目都失败了：快速、廉价地为部队提供能够在战场上发挥作用的新技术。

第 99 特遣队于 10 月中旬正式成立，并于 2022 年底迁入自己的设施。这支由 8 名美国人和 3 名分别来自意大利、加拿大和英国的士兵组成的队伍，计划与陆军和海军的兄弟机构合作，并利用军队“创新”生态系统中其他部门提供的资源。

布里拉希望将她的团队规模扩大一倍，但人数仍保持在 20 人以下，并招募在合同和财务等支持岗位上有经验的空军人员。

“由于我们身处部署环境，部队会有一定的轮换，这很好，因为可以不断注入新鲜血液，”她说。“但我们也需要……保持一定的连续性。”

瑞秋·科恩是《空军时报》的编辑。她于2021年3月加入该刊物，担任高级记者。她的作品曾发表在《华盛顿邮报》、《弗雷德里克新闻邮报》（马里兰州）、《空军与太空部队杂志》、《国防内幕》、《卫生政策内幕》等刊物上。