Ghosts of the Road: What the Failed War on IEDs Means for Drones

The U.S. military's strategy for countering drones dangerously mirrors its failed, multi-billion dollar fight against improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Just as with IEDs, adversaries are leveraging cheap, commercially available components to create a severe cost imbalance where defending is vastly more expensive than attacking. Drones, however, represent an even more dynamic threat as they are not static traps but mobile hunters that can actively seek out targets and deny maneuver across the battlefield. Attacking the drone network is also more challenging than it was for IEDs, as drone production relies on a massive global supply chain and shifts the focus from a few skilled bombmakers to a vast pool of easily trained pilots.