Imagine you’re at a baseball game. It’s a beautiful summer day when you notice far off in the sky there’s something unusual. As it gets closer you can see it’s a drone. You don’t know it yet, but attached to the bottom are explosives. You are about to be in a terror attack, but it may be illegal for stadium security or police officers to shoot the drone down.
The experts I spoke to for my latest Free Press documentary told me that a drone attack on U.S. soil is all but inevitable. In fact, there may have already been attempts. In November, a man was arrested for allegedly planning to attack Nashville’s power grid using a drone carrying an explosive device. In May, a Michigan man was arrested after allegedly flying his drone over a military base. The Department of Justice claims he was conducting reconnaissance for a planned mass shooting on the behalf of ISIS.
Though drones are now cheap and easy to weaponize, an outdated legal framework prevents local and state authorities from protecting citizens from potential drone attacks. Legally, drones are aircraft, and under U.S. Code Title 18, Section 32, interfering with the operation of any aircraft is a federal crime that can carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
While global defense giants and cutting-edge start-ups have developed the technology needed to detect incoming drones and destroy them, they cannot be deployed for local, state, or private use.
Only the Departments of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, and Justice have the explicit authorization to use counter-drone technology. So unless one of these authorities is on the scene of an attack, citizens would be out of luck. Andy Lowery, the CEO of the counter-drone company Epirus, told me simply that “we’re not prepared” as a country for drone attacks.
