By: Tuva Siegel, Warrior Editorial Fellow

The Pentagon's new drone handbook is designed to educate troops and the public to strengthen defenses against the rapidly growing drone threat, covering topics such as warfare, protection, and threat assessment.

Written by the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Defense Department's lead organization for countering drones, "Small Drones, Big Problems: A First Principles Approach to Countering-UAS" was published on July 8, 2026, marking its first long-form publication since its March 9 guide, "Counter-UAS Operations: Safeguarding Freedoms and Preserving Privacy."

Matthew Ross, Brig. Gen. U.S. Army, Director, JIATF 401, highlights that the purpose of this book lies in its ability to form a shared language between troops and the American people as the proliferation of drones continues to increase, both in war and recreational use. Awareness, specifically around how these systems are used and by whom, is essential for our safety. Ross writes that the handbook is meant to offer "a common foundation to shape our collective approach to this challenge." Through the use of real-life examples, accessible language, and a list of questions to aid in human decision-making, this book aims to place the U.S. military at the forefront of understanding, ahead of adversaries, quickly.

Drones are the defining threat of our time, and as Ross writes, "there is no silver bullet to protect against drones." The text points out that as drone systems advance quickly, the language used to describe them is often very technical, sometimes isolating experts from the broader audience. A shared understanding and practical vocabulary will help to unite and strengthen troops, industry, and civilian agencies against drone threats. Chapter 2 opens with a vignette detailing a disguised airbase attack that Ukraine conducted called "Operation Spider's Web" on June 1, 2025. "Ukraine deployed over 100 drones to strike Russian military bases and destroy one-third of the country's strategic bombers." Ukraine did this via unsuspecting deliverymen, hiding a drone fleet covertly inside the flatbed of a truck.

This vignette helps depict the critical considerations one must be prepared to make when facing a drone threat. What's notable from this story is the subtle difference between machine and human that the writer embeds. The drones "weren't hesitating or reacting, they were executing a task," which then resulted in the MP (Russian Air Force officer) being unable to “make sense of what he was seeing." This very real human hesitation, the moment before a decision spurs action, is something drones do not have. The computer enables a speed and immediacy in drone operations that human decision-making cannot match, especially when “hesitation” is present. Simply put, drones can act far more quickly than a human can. For example, as the swarm of drones finally became detectable, "his (the Russian officer's) radio crackled to life, filled with confused voices, overlapping questions, and someone shouting for confirmation." The characterization of this moment is an attempt to demonstrate the quickness needed when under a drone threat, a gap between machine execution and human comprehension that the handbook treats as the central vulnerability defenders have to close.

The handbook's core analytical tool is the Four Ps framework: Person (operator), Platform (drone type), Process (control method), Payload (purpose). The first P, person, is critical; it allows you to understand how the drone is programmed. A drone can be used as a "toy, tool, or weapon" depending on the programming implemented by its controller

Secondly, platform considerations mean knowing what types of drones and what materials are typically prevalent in any area of operations, such as "DJI quadcopters, fixed-wing drones, 3D printed drones, fiber optic drones." Each of these systems has distinct strengths and weaknesses that provide important clues about their range, altitude, and intentions. For example, small fixed-wing drones are unlikely to carry munitions due to their limited stability, while quadcopter drones can hover in place and surveil for longer periods. 

Thirdly, the type of drone control or process a military force is likely to encounter requires some observation. How the drone sounds and acts, takes off, lands, and behaves in flight will help in creating a protection plan. "The most common form of drone control today is radio frequency"; however, drones are advancing rapidly, meaning they are now becoming capable of flying over mobile data via cellular towers. Additionally, AI image recognition is being incorporated into targeting and navigation, the text explains. 

Finally, the purpose of the drone is "defined by the combination of its payload and operator's intent." Whether a drone is carrying munitions, cameras, or electronic sensors for jamming, its capabilities depend on what the operator seeks to achieve, "whether [it's intended to] see, hear, distract, disrupt, embarrass, intimidate, hurt, or kill." What's also important is that "a drone can achieve its purpose even if it is defeated." A drone does not always need to survive to accomplish its goal.

The handbook uses Operation Epic Fury as its other main example, alongside Spider's Web, to explain the operational significance of 'mass swarm’, known as groups of drones launched together or in close sequence toward a common objective. Operation Spider's Web showed how a handful of smuggled drones can be improvised into a strike force; Epic Fury showed the Four Ps at industrial scale. The person could be identified as an Iranian attacker, and the platform was a long-range, one-way attack drone, like the Shahed-136, used for deep strikes on infrastructure, as opposed to small quadcopters used for reconnaissance. The process relied on fly-by-waypoint navigation, meaning each drone's flight path was managed by pre-programmed GPS waypoints. Sending out large numbers of drones at once built in redundancy, so the loss of any single drone did little to weaken the attack as a whole, a tactic commonly used in these strikes. And the payload, per the handbook, was never intended to cause just physical damage: Iran struck with "the intent to influence global markets and undermine the United States' resolve," the same logic the handbook uses to argue a drone can “intimidate, attack, and exploit their opponents’ vulnerabilities” to succeed.

The publicly released numbers illustrate the impact of successful U.S. defensive drone attacks. According to a March 3, 2026, fact sheet, the operation launched at 1:15 a.m. on Feb. 28, 2026; within the first 72 hours, more than 1,700 targets were struck by the mass drone salvos, one-way attack drones, and pressure placed on layered air defense pressure the handbook describes. A later fact sheet, updated March 16, expanded the tally from Epic Fury to more than 7,000 targets. However, in the realm of drone defenses as apart from offensive attacks, the text emphasizes the need for multi-faceted layered defenses moving beyond standard drone interceptor systems such as Patriot and THAAD, the "layered defense" that Ross claims is the only real answer to a threat with no silver bullet. An April 8, 2026, White House release ultimately put the campaign's close at 38 days after a ceasefire, with more than 13,000 targets struck total, roughly 800 of them attack-drone targets, and more than 1,000 incoming attack-drone threats intercepted before they reached their targets. Those figures come from a press release from the Trump administration itself. A separate Congressional Research Service report on U.S. aircraft losses says its own count is drawn from open sources, not classified assessments, and could still change.

Tuva Siegel is an Editorial Fellow at Warrior Maven. She studies English at Kenyon College. Tuva is the author of Drömland, a fictional collection of short stories, and is currently studying weapons and military technology.