Imagine building a solution to a problem you never fully defined.
Thats where we are with airspace sovereignty. Especially when it comes to drones.
Weve spent billions of dollars on (C-UAS), deploying sensors and expanding capabilities. For many officials, C-UAS has become the solution. The problem is, it was never the full problem to begin with.
Before we talk about stopping drones, we should answer a more basic question: which ones belong in the air?
We cant answer that with confidence.
Weve gotten better at seeing the sky. But seeing is not the same as knowing what is flying in it.
Today, when a drone appears in , we can detect it and track it. With Remote ID, we can occasionally determine whos operating it. What we cannot do, quickly and with certainty, is determine whether that , meaning the aircraft, the operator, and the mission are approved and operating as intended.
And in airspace security, speed is everything. This isnt a problem you solve in minutes or hours. Decisions have to be made in seconds. In that moment, operators need to answer three questions: Is it authorized? Is it compliant? Is it a threat?
If you cant answer those questions immediately, you dont control your airspace.
Thats the gap.
In traditional aviation, that gap is managed far more effectively. Operations in controlled airspace tie together a verified operator, a known aircraft, and an approved flight plan, all continuously monitored.
The stakes are higher, but so is the structure, and the time to respond. Aircraft operate from known locations, along defined routes, over longer periods of time.
Drones dont operate that way.
They can be launched from less than a mile away and reach a target in minutes, often without any of those elements being reliably connected or visible in real time.
Today, who is flying, what they are flying, and why they are flying are not reliably connected, consistently verified, or available in real time to the people responsible for making decisions.
In complex airspace like the National Capital Region, this problem becomes impossible to ignore. A single drone operation may require approvals from multiple jurisdictional authorities, each operating through separate systems and timelines. There is no unified view of whats been approved, no shared system to see whats happening in real time, and no reliable way to ensure that an approved operation is doing what it was approved to do.
Authorization today isnt a system. Its a patchwork. An operator might go through LAANC, DroneZone, a COA, a waiver, or even a chain of emails and phone calls to get approval. Few of these systems talk to each other. Few provide a shared, real-time picture. None were built for the kind of airspace were trying to manage today.
Even when a drone is fully authorized, no one can immediately know that. The people responsible for securing the airspace are left piecing together fragments, seeing a drone, checking what they can, and then making a judgment call.
Thats not sovereignty. Thats uncertainty.
This didnt happen because people arent paying attention.
, among others, are all actively working this problem, and theyre doing it the way they were trained to, as a threat.
Thats not a criticism. Its reality.
This is a security issue.
But its also an .
And unless youve operated in both environments, its easy to focus on how to stop the threat before fully understanding how the airspace is supposed to work.
Ive seen this from both sides, operationally and from a security perspective.
I was asked during a congressional hearing, “If youre not sure, why not just shoot it down?” Its a fair question, until you consider where these operations happen.
Over cities. Over crowds. Over critical infrastructure.
Because when you dont know whats flying, what its carrying, or what its doing, you do
