Pentagon wants more money to fight Daesh drones
The Pentagon has told Congress that its needs at least $20 million on top of its current budget to counter the threat rising from the Daesh (ISIL) Takfiri group’s reconnaissance and bomber drones.
Daesh is in possession of drones that can carry improvised explosive devices (IED) and are capable of performing surveillance missions, the Defense News reported Saturday, citing Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization (JIDO) spokesman David Small.
To curb that threat, JIDO, which serves as the Pentagon office that counters IED threats, will need a $20 million boost to its Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Fund.
This will be added to the $190 million already allocated to attacking the terror networks in Overseas Contingency Operations funding for the 2015 fiscal year, according a reprogramming request sent to Congress last week.
The request hints at a gap in the US military’s abilities to track and destroy the drones, that according to Small include quadcopters and fixed-wing type drones.
“This unanticipated critical capability gap requires detection and defeat capabilities to acquire and defeat these small and tactical unmanned aerial systems that pose a direct threat to US and coalition forces,” the document reads.
Washington and its allies have been carrying out military strikes against alleged Daesh positions in Iraq and Syria since 2014.
“Drones can and have delivered small, precision IEDs in Iraq,” Small said. “This is an iteration on the basic IED and there are known efforts by ISIL to grow this capability.”
Small added that Daesh uses drones as a means of spreading propaganda “for recruitment and morale.”
Small refused to elaborate on JIDO’s counter-measures to the tactic in order to, as he said, “keep the enemy guessing.”
The US itself is a major operator of drones, running a worldwide assassination program with thousands of drones in countries like Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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