JIATF-401 Counter-UAS and Critical Infrastructure Protection Media Roundtable August 21, 2026

• Brigadier General Matt Ross, Director, JIATF-401

• Mr. Mike Torphy, Federal Bureau of Investigation

• Mr. Steve Willoughby, Department of Homeland Security

• Michael Marrow, Breaking Defense

• Barry Rosenberg, Breaking Defense

LTC ADAM SCHER: Thanks, everyone, for joining us for this discussion. I’ll moderate the conversation. We’ll go down the line, probably starting with Brandi and then moving through the room. Please keep it to one question and one follow-up.

All comments are on the record. I assume there are no issues with everyone recording. If there are any questions about process, I’ll moderate those as well.

We’ll begin with opening remarks from General Ross, followed by Mr. Steve Willoughby and Mr. Mike Torphy. Mr. Willoughby is with the Department of Homeland Security, and Agent Torphy is with the FBI.

As a reminder at the outset, JIATF-401 is not an operational command. Our focus today is on sharing how our task force works with local government and the interagency community to help keep Americans safe at recreation venues, where people congregate, and across our national infrastructure.

We will not speak to specifics about ongoing counter-UAS operations. We also will not evaluate past judgments or comment on operational actions or perspectives. Please refrain from asking those types of operational questions.

BRIG. GEN. MATT ROSS: Thank you and thank you all for taking the time to be here today. I know you’re all very busy.

You’ve already heard me speak a little bit today, so I won’t restate all of that. What I will say is that I really appreciate you covering this topic, because I think it’s an important one.

My commitment to you is that we want to be open and transparent about what we’re doing everywhere we can be, and everywhere it is appropriate. So, like Adam said, I won’t speak to current operations or current threats or those types of things. But I do think we’re making a lot of progress against the problem, and I think we should be putting this level of emphasis on it.

In order to communicate that to you, you have to have venues like this. So even independent of today’s event, if you ever have questions, and if you don’t already have Adam on speed dial, please do. Our commitment to you is to be open and transparent.

MR. STEVE WILLOUGHBY: Thank you. Really, just to echo the general’s sentiments, thank you for being here. This is an extremely important topic.

Collectively, this is all we do: drone and counter-drone work within the homeland, supporting our services and components. In my opinion, there is nothing more important right now than normalizing the use of UAS and counter-UAS systems for law enforcement, national security, and public safety reasons.

It is an enabling tool on both ends of the spectrum. Drones and the use of drones protect people, protect our assets, save lives, and really allow us to do more with less, which is critical in the current environment of government operations.

On the counter side, it’s about how we enable the good while preventing the bad. You hear that echoed from our NSC counterparts, the FBI, and other components. We want drones used for good reasons, but so do the bad guys. Like any other technological development, what is intended for good use can be misused by bad actors to accomplish their missions.

The World Cup is a great example of how we can do both within the same environment. We put up flight restrictions around stadiums, around critical infrastructure, and around fan zones, and there were authorized media, public safety, and even delivery drones flying within those spaces during the World Cup while we were actively managing flight restrictions and countering illicit, reckless, or nefarious drones.

All of that is encompassed within what we do on a daily basis, and I couldn’t be happier to work with these teammates.

You heard from my boss, Deputy Director Stephens, this morning, and he laid out pretty well how we feel about the past year. This is the second conference I’ve attended. I was at the first one, and I can tell you there is much more media here this time, and much more diversity in attendance. That is reflective of what we’ve achieved over the past year.

To echo a little bit of the general’s remarks about the breadth of the program, I’m coming from an operational background. I sit at Redstone Arsenal. I run the FBI’s UAS and counter-UAS side of the house. But it’s more than just that slice of detection and mitigation technology.

There’s also, as the general mentioned, left of launch: prevention, preparedness, and training in that regard, and even informing the community and the public about recognizing what is a drone versus what are other things in the night sky. We’ve learned that over the years.

There is detection and mitigation. There is render-safe for our bomb technician program. There is exploitation, forensics, investigations, and intelligence. How do we bring it all together?

That really touches a wide swath of the federal government, as well as state and local government, the private sector, academia, industry, and even the media, all working together.

I’ve been in government for almost 24 years now, and I will say that we all get along very well in this mission space. There’s really no infighting or conflict between us. We’re all trying to get the job done.

LTC ADAM SCHER: Great. Please introduce yourself and your outlet.

BRANDI VINCENT, DEFENSESCOOP: Sure. Hi, I’m Brandi Vincent. I’m a national security reporter at Defense Scoop. I like to say my beat is how technology is helping and hurting users.

Thanks for hosting us. My first question is: you briefly mentioned on stage this new EW pilot, and that it’s with the FAA and would be extending out to bases. Can you give us a little more of a rundown on what that’s going to look like, and anything about where, what bases it might be at?

BRIG. GEN. MATT ROSS: Thanks for the question.

It’s a directed energy pilot. When we say directed energy, we use that term to be inclusive of all novel technologies, but what we’re really focused on right now is high-energy lasers and high-power microwaves.

We have a number of systems, and we’ve proven that the science works. You can defeat a drone with both a high-energy laser and a high-power microwave. But we need to figure out how to use them successfully in an operational context.

We need to develop the tactics, techniques, and procedures to be able to use them on a base in a way that doesn’t impede the critical functions of that base. I don’t want to shut down the airspace as I use those systems. I also want to understand the fully burdened cost of operating those systems.

So, we’re going to do it for a 365-day period. For one year, I want to put those systems on an installation and have actual service members run them, operate them, and maintain them. In areas where they’re not maintainable on their own and require a field support representative, I want to know that as part of that fully burdened cost. I want to know what their power requirements are over a 365-day period. How many days are they operationally capable versus how many days do they require repair?

It’s only with that type of information that I’ll be able to go back to the services and say: I know you want to integrate directed energy; here’s what it costs to integrate directed energy, so you can do a relative comparison of that type of defeat mechanism or mitigation compared to a more conventional defeat mechanism where you’re just going to sense and maybe use interceptors.

That’s the goal with the directed energy pilot.

There are two components of it that I think are really important. The first is that we selected four bases where we’re going to deploy those systems, and we’re deploying a number of different systems at those bases. I don’t want to give you bad locations, because we’ve got a couple of additional locations as well, but I’ll follow up with you on the four locations. Grand Forks, North Dakota, is one. Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington is one. Whiteman Air Force Base is one, where they have a phenomenal security force that’s going to give us really good feedback. And I believe Fort Bliss is the fourth.

The second piece of that directed energy pilot is that we’re going to run a directed energy shoot-off in December, and we’re doing it in conjunction with OUSD(R&E), the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

We want to look at new entrants as well. We don’t want to just down-select to one or two systems. We want to allow young, innovative companies that have a good idea, and maybe want to introduce something that looks more like a commercial laser with a more robust supply chain, so we can reduce the cost of maintenance over time. We want to give them a chance to perform.

We’re trying to structure that event in such a way that systems that perform effectively or successfully can immediately result in a purchase order that allows us to start building the production lines to get these systems into the field.

BRANDI VINCENT, DEFENSESCOOP: I have so many questions I could follow up with, but in the interest of time and my colleagues, I’ll leave it to one.

Something I’ve been thinking about with all of this is: we’re hearing a lot on the actual physical drone side about lowering the cost per kill. But on the EW side, as you’re thinking about countering drones, is there pressure on you around lowering the cost on the counter side as you’re developing this together?

And then for the two of you, are the drones you’re countering the same or different? How are the threats different? I was recently at an event with Skydio, and I was asking the Fairfax Police Department how that drone compares to the drone that Skydio is deploying elsewhere. So, can you talk a little bit about what you’re learning and sharing about the adversarial drones each of your components are targeting?

MR. MIKE TORPHY: I think we share the same enemy, and that’s what makes the collaboration so important.

There’s a democratization of the ability for our enemy to produce lethal weapons, and not only lethal weapons, but surveillance weapons and disruption weapons, very cheaply, with knowledge that’s very publicly available.

From that perspective, yes, there are Group 3 and higher systems, Shaheds, et cetera. But that doesn’t mean that because those exist elsewhere, it couldn’t happen here. That said, that’s really not the likely threat we’re facing, because there’s attribution to those platforms. There may not be attribution to a homebuilt system, and that’s why it’s very important for us on the law enforcement and homeland security side to make contact with the pilot and hold them accountable, because if it is a nation-state actor, we need attribution.

MR. STEVE WILLOUGHBY: I would just add that within Homeland Security, we have a very large breadth of mission sets. For all of those mission sets that we are working to secure, a drone can be used in a nefarious way.

And not just the really bad stuff, like delivering narcotics or a kinetic strike. You can launch a drone on an active runway and cause economic disruption in the millions. I think it’s something like $5,000,000 an hour in lost revenue at one airport if there’s a disruption. That’s from a study years ago, so it’s probably even higher now.

That is impactful to public safety and to national security. Maybe that’s a different threat manifestation versus somebody who actually wants to kill people or cause destruction, but economic harm is just as much of a risk to us within homeland security and within the national security apparatus as people losing their lives.

Coming off the success from this summer, there were 700 drones seized, and we engaged with nearly every one of those drone operators. We seized those drones. The intent is never really known until you go and talk to the person, until you understand it. Maybe they’re being intentionally deceptive or trying to hide their intentions.

It’s very much like the TSA mission. People ask us how many terrorists we’ve caught. They don’t come out and say they’re terrorists. It’s the little things that stop, and being able to interdict something before it happens and be as far left of launch as possible. That’s applicable across all different threat vectors: large, small, sophisticated, and unsophisticated.

BRIG. GEN. MATT ROSS: If I could just add a couple things, Brandi.

One, great point by Steve, and I’d reinforce what DAD Stevens said during his official comments: on our best night, you don’t hear anything.

Two, in terms of how our threats are the same and different, we focus on first principles of defeating a drone. Every drone has physical mass. It has something that allows stable flight. It has an audible signature. So, as I think about detection, I think about first principles of detection as opposed to a specific modality, like detecting a signal. In that case, there’s commonality between the threats that we would see in different environments, whether it’s a combat context or an airport at home.

In terms of cost, yes, I think about the cost a lot. I think about it from two primary lenses. One is the cost exchange ratio. We don’t want to shoot a really expensive interceptor at an inexpensive drone. That puts us on the wrong side of a cost curve, and once you start getting into mass, it’s a problem.

That’s how we traditionally think of it. But the other way I think about it is in terms of scale. If we are going to scale counter-UAS technologies, and I believe the market is much bigger than we appreciate right now, then they have to be lower cost.

I consistently get comments specifically about the cost exchange, and people will say, if you go with this really exquisite system, maybe it’s a directed energy system, the cost is 8 cents per shot. I say, okay, then let me understand the fully burdened cost of that. Because if I procure that system and it costs me $6,000,000 and I take one shot a year, you can’t tell me that that shot only costs 8 cents. We have to take a more holistic look at it.

ELEANOR WATSON, CBS NEWS: Hi, Ellie Watson with CBS News. Thank you all for doing this.

At the beginning of Operation [inaudible], there were incursions near Barksdale. Has the investigation determined the origin of those drones?

MR. MIKE TORPHY: I can’t comment on the investigation. The investigation is ongoing. But I can tell you that the Louisiana State Police, the FBI out of our New Orleans Field Office, in coordination with the Department of War and other partners, were on it.

Every time something like that happens, there’s always a challenge. Frankly, when we look back historically, like Mr. Stevens said, that first 90 seconds is so important. The next day is a lot less important, and then here we are, six months later. The further we get away from the incident, the more difficult it is to know for sure what happened.

There were investigative actions that took place, and there was great work being done on the ground by our state and local partners and the FBI field office. That’s as far as I can go on that.

But it’s really about how we get stronger for the next time there’s a Barksdale. The Barksdale of tonight. The Barksdale of next week. And we must assume that it will happen.

What I think about is: it probably already has happened at some point domestically at one of our sensitive installations, whether it was a military installation, a cleared defense contractor, or some other facility we care about. Do we even know it happened? That’s what I care more about: the things that are not reported up, where people thought it was a quiet night, but it wasn’t a quiet night. If the lights are on and the drones are there, I’m less concerned. When the lights are off and the drones are there, that’s what I’m worried about. And then: did we catch that?

ELEANOR WATSON, CBS NEWS: So, were any of the drones recovered?

MR. MIKE TORPHY: All I can say is that there were investigative efforts on the ground. But like I said, we’re not always going to know for sure whether those investigative efforts came back to what was reported at Barksdale.

ELEANOR WATSON, CBS NEWS: And a quick follow-up for General Ross: the Army this week confirmed that one of the battalions that was focusing on drone warfare is going to switch back to its airborne mission. Does that, to you, mean a step back for incorporating drones into formations?

BRIG. GEN. MATT ROSS: I focus on ensuring that our formations have as many tools as possible to support them in their protection mission and to counter the threat of drones.

I think every service will employ those tools differently. There are a lot of discussions ongoing about whether it’s a formation, a new MOS, a rate, or an AFSC. The Air Force just recently was doing some analysis about whether to make this a specific mission area.

We don’t get involved in that. It’s not our role. We’re not an operational headquarters. We focus on giving them as many tools as possible so they can continue to operate on this problem.

MICHAEL MARROW, BREAKING DEFENSE: Hi, Mike Marrow with Breaking Defense. Thanks for doing this.

First question for you, General Ross. I think within the next month or so, NORTHCOM is going to be doing its next iteration of the Falcon Peak event demonstration. I’ve been to a couple in the past.

Falcon Peak was established in the wake of incursions at bases like Langley in particular. NORTHCOM at one point was offering the idea of a flyaway kit if a base had repeated incursions. I was hoping you could elaborate on what the coordination is like with NORTHCOM right now. What are the roles and responsibilities there? And how much farther along are you in being able to actually prevent something like another Barksdale or another Langley incursion?

BRIG. GEN. MATT ROSS: Great question, Mike.

On roles and responsibilities: again, JIATF-401 is not an operational headquarters, but we do work in support of the services and the combatant commands.

General Guillot at NORTHCOM is responsible for protection and counter-UAS activities across NORTHCOM. What that means is that we partner with them closely, both to understand the threat and to make sure they have additional tools to be able to counter those threats. In some cases, we procure those tools rapidly to get them out to the service members who are going to be conducting those defensive activities.

An example would be the National Defense Areas with JTF-North, where the services provided counter-UAS equipment, and in areas where we felt there were gaps or seams, we provided supplemental equipment along with the associated training to be able to use those systems effectively, fully in support of General Guillot and NORTHCOM.

There are a couple of other areas where we’ve done that, specifically the National Capital Region, where we work closely with both NORAD and NORTHCOM to make sure that from surface to space, we’ve got shared air domain awareness and layered protection to be able to protect against any threat.

As you go to the bases, it’s a little bit different because the services have responsibility for bases. So, we work closely with each of the Department of War services. As part of our Domestic Shield effort, we’re providing additional counter-UAS capability to each of the critical infrastructure sites within the department designated by the service secretaries.

We’ve made a great deal of progress on that over the past nine months, looking at each installation. One of the things I’m most proud of is that we didn’t deliver the exact same equipment to every installation. They’re all different sizes and shapes. They have different activities and assets that need to be protected. They have different types of security forces. In some cases, it’s troops or service members. In some cases, it’s government civilians, and in some cases it’s contractors.